leadball,
You bet! Resolution is everything. I think this was brought out very well in the article.
As I get it resolution is the ability to distinguish objects at a distance at a given magnification. Magnification helps in this regard, but only to a certain extent. The front lense of your scope has to be large enuf, and have the proper quality, and coatings on it to gather as much lite as possible. This is why you pay more for the same thing on the better quality scopes, and anything else that has a lense system in it.
I thought the example the author gave between his buddies 8x30(?) and his 10x50 was a little poor. Naturally his binoculars would be better given the same quality lense system. What you need to do is compare apples to apples..... in this case it would be both being 8x30's or 10x50's. Then you could make a direct comarison.
A high quality Swarovski or Leica 8x30 will beat an average quality 10x50 as far as being able to resolve an object at a distance.
The other thing to remember is there is a lot of hype when it comes to selling any binoculor or spotting scope. Some make the claim that the exit (what you put your eye to) lense is, say, 7 or 8 mm. They use this to try and get you to believe their system is better than the others. Of course nothing is mentioned of this in the ads. It's just a figure thrown out for those who don't know any better. The problem is that your eye pupil can only expand to 5 mm, so any more light exiting the system can't be used by your eyes.
What is needed is an objective (front) lense as large as possible and of the best quality glass. It is this amount of light that is used by the magnification of the system to help you in resolving an object. This is pointed out by the fact that even the cheapest scopes will let you see an object well toward dark.
Also, the larger the objective lense the more magnifcation you can use to help you resolve an object. Ever notice how huge the camera lenses are that sports photographers use? They need these large lenses to gather enuf lite so they can use a higher magnification, and to keep the f-stops reasonable in order to capture fast moving action.
As shooters & hunters our real problem is that we just can't carry around a Mt. Palomar telescope with us.
So everything becomes a tradeoff and is usually limited by what we can afford to pay.
You're right about shooters of the past using lower powered scopes than we use today. Schuetzen shooters like Pope thought that a 6x or 8x scope was more than adequate for offhand shooting. But, the bench shooters back then used the highest power they could get that would do the job. Part of the problem back then was the quality of the lenses. Back when 3/4", 1", or 1 1/4" objective lenses were the norm you just couldn't push them to 36x. As the power went up in these scopes things got dimmer till you reached a point where it affected your ability to see the target clearly enuf. You can easily check this out for yourself by taking a 1 1/4" Unertl and compare it with a 2 1/2" model of the same power. The latter will be noticeably brighter.
PETE