The Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth Century.

by Edward W. Byrn

The Machine Gun.—During the Civil War a gun made its appearance which, although of small calibre, rivaled in its deadly effectiveness the wholesale slaughter of the cannon. It was a new type, and was known as the machine gun, or battery gun, in which balls of comparatively small size were discharged uninterruptedly and in incredible succession. It was the invention of Dr. R. J. Gatling, and was covered by him in patents No. 36,836, November 4, 1862, and No. 47,631, May 9, 1865, and in many subsequent patents for minor improvements, and is now universally known as the Gatling gun. It consisted of a circular series of barrels mounted on a central shaft, and revolved by suitable gears and a hand crank. The cartridges were automatically and successively fed into the chambers of the barrel, and its several hammers were so arranged in connection with the barrels that the whole operation of loading, closing the breech, discharging and expelling the empty cartridge cases was conducted while the barrels were kept in a continuous revolving movement by turning the hand crank. In [Fig. 274] is shown a modern example of the Gatling gun equipped with the Accles feed. Ordinarily the gun has ten barrels, with ten corresponding locks, which revolve together during the working of the gun. When the gun is in action there are always five cartridges going through the process of loading, and five empty shells in different stages of being extracted, and many hundred shots a minute can be fired. Many modifications of this gun have been made by Hotchkiss and others. Maxim, Nordenfelt, and Benet have each made valuable inventions in machine guns of a somewhat different type, some of which utilize the force of the exploding charges to react on the feed and firing mechanism, and thus furnish the power to continue the consecutive operation of the gun, so that no hand crank is required, but the gun works itself with an incessant hail of balls until its supply of cartridges is exhausted.

FIG. 274.—GATLING GUN ON UNITED STATES ARMY MODEL CARRIAGE.

The Dynamite Gun.—Most impressive to the layman, and most demoralizing to the enemy, is this latter day form of ordnance. The first efforts to hurl dynamite shells from a gun were made with compressed air for fear of prematurely exploding the sensitive dynamite in the gun, which would be more disastrous to the gunners themselves than to the enemy. The Zalinski dynamite gun was of this class, and the first which attained any notoriety. Foolhardy as it might appear, Yankee genius was led to believe that dynamite shells could be fired with powder charges, and this is now done in a practical and safe way in the Sims-Dudley Dynamite Gun. This is manufactured under the fundamental patents of Dudley, Nos. 407,474, 407,475, 407,476, of July 23, 1889, which cover a method of exploding a charge of powder in one gun barrel, and causing it to compress the air in front of it, and force it into another barrel behind the dynamite shell, so that this relatively cool body of air is interposed between the hot powder gases and the dynamite. [Fig. 275] represents Dudley’s patent drawing. C is the powder charge in barrel A, and H is the dynamite shell in barrel G. The front of barrel A is connected to the rear of barrel G behind the dynamite shell by the tube F. When the powder C explodes, all the air in barrel A and tube F is driven out and acts on the dynamite shell H to discharge it without allowing it to come in contact with the hot powder gases. A frangible plate D closes the end of barrel A, but blows out above a certain pressure to avoid bursting strain in the gun. The Sims patent, No. 619,025, February 7, 1899, covers a more simple and practical form of constructing a gun on this principle, and the gun as used in the United States is constructed in accordance with this latter improvement.

FIG. 275.—DYNAMITE GUN, DUDLEY’S PATENT, JULY 23, 1889.

Small Arms.—Pistols and guns are the two classes into which the layman divides small arms, although in latter years this classification has been much disturbed by the western frontiersman, who calls his pistol a gun, and by the artillerist, who also calls his cannon a gun.

The pistol may be defined as a small arm held in one hand to be fired. It is an ancient weapon, but had attained no special importance or popularity prior to the Nineteenth Century. The duelling pistol, with its long barrel, its hair trigger and inlaid stock, and the derringer, with its short barrel of large bore, were the popular forms. Not until the revolver made its appearance did the pistol attain any importance. Colt is popularly credited with having invented this, but it is really a very old principle. In the Alte Deutscher Drehling Der Ruckladungs Gewehre, by Edward Zernin, 1872, Darmstadt and Leipzig, is shown an ancient form of match lock revolver, said to belong to the period 1480-1500. It is probably the same as the match-lock revolver in the museum of the Tower of London, which is also credited to the Fifteenth Century. In the British patent to Puckle, No. 418, of 1718, is shown and described a well-constructed revolver carried on a tripod, and of the dimensions of the modern machine gun. The inventor naïvely states that it has round chambers for round balls, designed for Christians, and square chambers, with square balls, for the Turks. The first revolving firearm in the United States was made by John Gill, of Newberne, N. C., in 1829. It had fourteen chambers, and was a percussion gun, but was never patented. The first revolver patented in the United States was that to D. G. Colburn, June 29, 1833. The revolver of Col. Samuel Colt was patented February 25, 1836, (re-issue No. 124, October 24, 1848), and again August 29, 1839, No. 1,304; September 3, 1850, No. 7,613, and September 10, 1850, No. 7,629. It was the first practical invention of this kind, and it embodied as a leading feature the automatic rotation of the cylinder in cocking by a pawl on the hammer engaging a ratchet on the end of the cylinder.