David P. Bushnell, an importer who helped introduce middle-class Americans
to binoculars after World War II, died Thursday, March 24, 2005 at his home
in Laguna Beach, Calif. He was 92.
The cause was complications of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, his family said.
Binoculars were toys for the wealthy when Mr. Bushnell bought two crates
of them in Japan in 1948, during his honeymoon with his second wife.
Working at times from his mother-in-law's house in Pasadena, Calif., he sold
the binoculars by mail order for roughly half the price of competing brands.
He turned a $20,000 profit the first year, according to an interview with The Los Angeles Times, and quickly ceased selling other products to focus on binoculars. He renamed his import business Bushnell Optical and envisioned every family's being able to afford a pair of binoculars for the occasional football game or sightseeing trip.
"The world is beautiful," the company's advertisements said. "See it up close."
In his 22 years as the owner of the company, Bushnell Optical expanded its product line to all sorts of optical equipment for outdoor pursuits, including rifle scopes and spotting scopes. It also secured patents for refinements that made its products lighter and more precise, and it eventually worked with factories in Hong Kong and Taiwan, in addition to Japan.
Sold to Bausch & Lomb in 1971 and renamed Bushnell Performance Optics, the company says it now sells more than half of the binoculars in the United States. Mr. Bushnell retired in 1974 as a vice president of Bausch & Lomb. It was bought by Wind Point Partners in 1999.
David Pearsall Bushnell was born in St. Paul, on March 31, 1913, and was related to David Bushnell who designed the country's first submarine, the Turtle, which was used in the Revolutionary War.
Raised largely in Los Angeles, Mr. Bushnell attended the California Institute of Technology for three years before leaving to travel. He received a degree in foreign trade from the University of Southern California in 1936.
After working at Sunkist for a few months, he started his business importing and exporting commodities like turquoise from Iran and cement from Belgium. During World War II, he worked in the administration department at Lockheed.
Mr. Bushnell is survived by his wife, Nancy; two sons, David Alan, of Udonthani, Thailand, and Steven Ensign, of South Pasadena, Calif.; two daughters, Jean Bushnell Salfen, of Pollock Pines, Calif., and Natasha Bushnell Suter, of Ithaca, N.Y.; eight grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. His first wife, Frances Elizabeth Krug, died in 1947. His marriage to Nina Gmirkin ended in divorce.