Says His Rifle Fires 200 Shots a Minute.
A one-man gun, invented by a Rochester man, and guaranteed by him to increase a soldier’s fighting efficiency twenty or thirty times, is for sale. Its inventor, Harry W. Sweeting, says he has begun negotiations with Germany for the sale of the invention, which he has protected by American patents. Mr. Sweeting is now in New York on his way to Washington. At the Park Avenue Hotel he admitted that he was trying to sell the gun to Germany, but hinted that there was some probability of negotiations with this government.
The new gun weighs only nine pounds, half a pound more than the present standard rifle. It will fire from 165 to 200 shots a minute, Mr. Sweeting said, ninety shots consecutively without being taken from the shoulder. He says the velocity is 2,700 feet a second.
“By holding the trigger back,” Mr. Sweeting said, “ninety shots are fired. The ejector is on the under side. The sight is only three inches from the eye, giving a quicker and more accurate aim than in the present rifles,[Pg 64] in some of which the sight is thirteen inches from the eye.
“My gun has only one-third as many working parts as the present rifle. There is not a flat spring in the gun, and all the parts are inclosed, which protects them from the weather. It has safety locks which make it impossible to fire after the gun misses fire, and a self-cleaning device. Give me the gun to bring down a man a mile away who is six feet from a tree and I will get him before he gets to the tree. If I should fail, I can shoot him through the tree, if it is not more than eighteen inches in diameter.”
The inventor has been working on the invention for more than a year. His thirty-eight pages of specifications are registered with the Patent Office.