Therefore, the inventor generally gives the shooter a stock unsuitable to do good shooting with.
The inventor should work in combination with the shooter. The shape of the pistol externally should first be decided on by the shooter, so as to be the best possible for shooting. In my opinion this should be the shape of the French duelling pistol of the Gastinne-Renette pattern. (Plates 2 and 9.)
The inventor should try to design his pistol to fit, as far as possible, into this external shape.
Some points, as the distance of the trigger from the finger, and the slope and form of the butt, cannot be departed from without injury to accurate shooting and quick handling of the pistol, and yet these are the very things inventors alter.
Other points the shooter may give way in, if such modifications are of vital importance from the inventor’s point of view.
The reverse procedure is, however, the rule. An inventor generally has no knowledge of shooting, or horses, or whatever else his invention applies to; he is merely a clever mechanic. He has “imagination” and theories. Generally, such theories are most grotesque and childish.
I will instance an invention relating to horse-shoes.
The inventor showed me a sort of bird-cage of iron and said it was a horse-shoe.
He informed me that shoeing horses as at present practised is wrong. “It is brutal to nail shoes onto horses’ feet. How would you like to have an iron shoe nailed on the sole of your bare foot?”
I tried to explain to him that the outer horn of a horse’s foot has no feeling, that a horse is hurt only when the farrier is clumsy and drives a nail into the sensitive inner tissues of the foot, but he was too far absorbed in his theories to listen to me.