Steiner Binoculars Factory Tour

Steiner Binoculars Factory Tour

Steiner has been the industry leader in performance German Optics since 1947. Steiner was founded by Karl Steiner 60 years ago and is now run by his son Carl. Karl Steiner was one of Zeiss's top engineers before WWII and left Zeiss to start Steiner Optics

Here is a photo of Carl Steiner standing explaining a compact binocular. Sven Harms, the US Steiner Importer, is standing to his left, Gerald Sutter the U.S. marketing manager is sitting to his right, and Julie Wegner, a Steiner rep from the U.S. is sitting to his left.

Steiner is most well known for their rugged binoculars and is often associated with military binoculars, hunting binoculars, marine binoculars and police binoculars. Here is one the testing stations helped designed by the military to make sure Steiner binoculars can perform in the most harsh situations on earth.

Steiner is known the world over for handling the most rugged of conditions. They are heated to 70 Celsius or 158 Fahrenheit with 80% humidity and then cooled to 40 degrees below zero to make sure they can handle anything. They are then put into a chamber that tests the internal components at 11 times its own gravity and bounced over 1000 times. Just looking through the optics is not enough to really see what a Steiner is made from as someone who has had one for 10 years what they think about the product. Chinese made binoculars will go out of alignment years before the Steiner binoculars will.

Here is one of the Steiner Binoculars testing stations.

After going to the factory Carl often took us out for beer. This was a common site for us while in Germany.ﾠ (drinking great beer that had been brewed since 1040.

This is my favorite photo from the trip look at all that great beer!

On the last day in Germany Dan and I listened to the locals and went to the recommended beer haus.