THE CANNON THE MOST ANCIENT OF FIREARMS--MUZZLE AND BREECH LOADERS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY--THE ARMSTRONG GUN--THE RODMAN, DAHLGREN AND PARROTT GUNS--BREECH LOADING ORDNANCE--RAPID FIRE BREECH LOADING RIFLES--DISAPPEARING GUN--GATLING GUN--DYNAMITE GUN--THE COLT AND SMITH & WESSON REVOLVERS--GERMAN AUTOMATIC PISTOL--BREECH LOADING SMALL ARMS--MAGAZINE GUNS--THE LEE, KRAG-JORGENSEN, AND MAUSER RIFLES--HAMMERLESS GUNS--REBOUNDING LOCKS--GUN COTTON--NITRO- GLYCERINE AND SMOKELESS POWDER--MINES AND TORPEDOES.

Strange as it may appear, the evolution of an enlightened civilization and the deadly use of firearms have developed in parallel lines. What relation there may be between the adoption of the teachings of Christ to men to love one another, and the invention of increased facilities among men for killing one another, is a problem for the philosopher. Is it because killing at long range is less brutal, or does the deterrent influence of this increased facility operate as a check appealing to the fear of the individual, or is the cannon one of G.o.d's missionaries in working out the great law of the survival of the fittest? Whatever it may be, there does seem to be some relation of cause and effect between the two factors, and doubtless all three of the causes have exercised a contributory influence. In the olden days the wage of battle was almost universally decided by the strength of brawn, and the higher qualities of mind were subservient. The advent of firearms has changed all this.

It has made the weakest arm equal to the strongest when supported by the same or a superior mental equipment, and this has made a great step toward the supremacy of the intellectual against the attack of the physically strong. In the fifth century the great civilization of Rome fell under the ruthless attack of the northern barbarian. Could such a thing have been possible with the gates defended by Gatling guns, magazine rifles, and dynamite sh.e.l.ls? On the contrary, we find to-day a handful of trained soldiers equipped with modern firearms putting to flight a horde of ignorant savages. The history of modern wars is filled with ill.u.s.trations of the shifting of the contest among men from an issue of brute force to a contest of brains, and of the support rendered the latter by firearms. But is war really necessary, and may we not hope that it shall cease? We can only say that the ideal sentiment of beating the sword into the plowshare is as yet the dream of the optimist, for man has gone right along in perfecting the arts of war and raising the execution of firearms to such a deadly efficacy, that the Nineteenth Century in a paramount degree has been conspicuously notable for its advances in this art. Invention after invention has followed in such rapid succession, even to the last years of the Nineteenth Century, until war now a.s.sumes the conditions of suicide and annihilation.

No coherent history of firearms and explosives is possible in any short review. The cannon, bombard or mortar, musket, pistol and petard, all belong to former centuries, and in one form or another extend back to the most ancient times, but they have grown in the Nineteenth Century into such accuracy and distance of range, into such rapidity of action, into such multiplied efficiency in repeating systems, into such energy of explosives, and such convenient embodiment and penetration of projectile, that these subjects must needs be considered in separate divisions.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 265.--MUZZLE LOADING CANNON OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.]

_The Cannon_ is the most ancient of all firearms, and, like gunpowder, is believed to have had its origin with the Chinese. In the Eleventh Century the vessels of the King of Tunis, in the attack on Seville, are said to have had on board iron pipes from which a thundering fire was discharged. Conde, in his history of the Moors in Spain, speaks of them as used in that country as early as 1118. Ferdinand, in 1309, took Gibraltar from the Moors by cannon, and in 1346 the English used them at the battle of Crecy, and from that time on they became a common weapon of warfare. In the first cannon used the b.a.l.l.s were of stone, and some of them were of enormous size. The bronze cannon of Mohammed II., A.

D., 1464, had a bore of 25 inches, and threw a stone ball of 800 pounds.

The _Tsar-Pooschka_, the great bronze gun of Moscow, cast in 1586, was even larger, and had a bore 36 inches in diameter. Early in the history of the cannon the breech-loading feature was introduced. In Figs. 265 and 266 are shown ill.u.s.trations from the Sixteenth Century, Fig. 265 representing a muzzle loader, and Fig. 266 a breech-loader.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 266.--BREECH LOADING CANNON OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.]

Pa.s.sing through various stages of development, the cannon came down to the Nineteenth Century, and was known generally as ordnance or artillery, and specifically as cannon or heavy guns, mortars for throwing sh.e.l.l at a great elevation, and howitzers for field, mountain, or siege, and which latter are lighter and shorter than cannon, and designed to throw hollow projectiles with comparatively small charges.

The feature of importance in the cannon which contributed most to its efficiency was the rifling of the bore with spiral grooves. This, by giving a rotating effect to the projectile, caused it to maintain a truer flight by taking advantage of the law of physics that a rotating body tends to preserve its plane of rotation. The rifling of the barrels of firearms is, however, of very ancient origin. The British patent to Rotsipen, No. 71, of 1635, is an early disclosure of this art. The patent was granted him for

"Fourteen yeares if he live soe long." * * * "To draw or to shave barrells for pieces of all sortes straight even and smooth, and to make anie crooked barrell perfectly straight with greate ease, and to _rifle cutt out_ or screwe barrells as wyde or as close or as deepe or as shallowe as shalbe required, with greate ease."

The rifle grooves, however, were first made spiral or "screwed" by Koster, of Birmingham, about 1620, while straight grooves are said to have been in use as far back as 1498. In Berlin there is a rifled cannon of 1664 with thirteen grooves. Rifled cannon were first employed in actual service in Louis Napoleon's Italian campaign of 1859, and were first introduced in the United States service by General James in 1861.

About the middle of the Nineteenth Century a great impetus was given to the development of artillery by the Crimean War, followed by the Civil War of the United States.

In England the Armstrong gun was introduced about 1855, and was covered by British patents No. 401, of 1857; No. 2,564, of 1858; No. 611, of 1859, and No. 743, of 1861. This originally consisted of an internal tube of wrought iron or gun metal, with cylindrical casings of wrought iron shrunk on. It was afterwards improved in what was known as the Fraser gun. In Germany the operations of Krupp as a gun maker began to be notable about this period. In the United States, Colonel Rodman devised a means of casting guns of large calibre, by having a hollow core through which water was circulated to rapidly cool and harden the metal in the vicinity of the bore, and to relieve the unequal strain in cooling. He obtained patent No. 5,236, August 14, 1847, for the same.

The Dahlgren gun was patented August 6, 1861, Nos. 32,983, 32,984, and 32,985, by Admiral Dahlgren, U. S. N. The improvement covered the adjustment of the thickness of the metal at the breech of the gun to the varying pressure strains along the bore. These guns were distinguishable by the smooth bulbous breech of great thickness and curvilinear contour.

The Parrott gun, patented October 1, 1861, No. 33,401, and May 6, 1862, No. 35,171, comprehended a form of hooped ordnance in which the breech was re-enforced by an encompa.s.sing hoop or sleeve, which was shrunk on.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 267.--THE KRUPP BREECH MECHANISM.]

_Breech-Loading Ordnance._--While the breech-loading cannon is several centuries old, and was, in fact, one of the first forms of that firearm, it is to this principle of action that the rapid fire and great execution of the modern weapon are chiefly due. The earliest of existing forms of breech mechanism is that which comprehends the channeling of the breech transversely to receive a tapered plug, which permits the charge to be placed in the open rear end of the gun in front of the channel, and the transverse plug then closed behind the charge. This is described in Hadley's British patent No. 577, of 1741; was first patented in the United States in a modified form by Wright and Gould, No. 22,325, December 14, 1858, and afterwards came to be known as the Broadwell system, being developed by him and covered in patents No.

33,876, of December 10, 1861; No. 43,553, July 12, 1864, and No. 55,762, June 19, 1866. This general principle is still employed by Krupp in some of his guns, and as used by him is shown in Fig. 267. The transverse channel through the breech is tapered, and the sliding breech block X is slightly wedge-shaped to fit tightly therein. When the breech block is withdrawn for loading, as shown, a sleeve S, shown in dotted lines, is temporarily arranged in alignment with the bore and gives smooth pa.s.sage way to the charge to a position in front of the breech block. This sleeve is then withdrawn, the breech block forced in, and is there locked by a turn of the threads of a locking screw _b_ into the corresponding recesses _a_ in the breech. A detachable wrench _e_ may be applied either to the screw _d b_ to turn it to lock or unlock, or to the traversing screw _c_, which, by engaging with a nut (not shown), runs the breech block in and out.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 268.--INTERRUPTED THREAD BREECH MECHANISM.]

By far the most popular principle of the breech block, however, is that of the interrupted thread, shown in Fig. 268, in which the plug, when closed, has its axis in alignment with the axial bore of the gun. Its threads are interrupted by longitudinally arranged channels, and the breech of the gun has corresponding threads and channels. When the plug is pushed into the gun, the screw threads of the plug enter the channels of the breech, and a rotary turn of the screw plug then locks its threads into those of the breech. The screw plug is supported by a carrier hinged at one side to the gun, and arranged to swing the plug into axial alignment with the bore, or be thrown to one side to admit the charge. The patents to Chambers, No. 6,612, July 31, 1849 (re-issue No. 237, April 19, 1853), and to Cochran, No. 26,256, November 29, 1859, are the earliest American examples of this principle of action, and are believed to be the original inventions of the same.

In one form or another this construction enters into most all modern breech mechanisms. Among the forms used by the United States are the Driggs-Seabury, the Dashiell, and the Vickers-Maxim. To prevent the expanding gases from driving through the crevices of the breech block, expanding or swelling rings, known as gas checks, are arranged on the front of the breech block. De Bange's patent, No. 301,220, July 1, 1884, covers the most popular form.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 269.--SIGHTING A SIX-INCH RAPID FIRE GUN.]

The elements of efficiency of the modern rapid-fire breech-loading rifle are to be found in the following features: First, in the increased length of the gun, which, for a 6-inch gun is now as much as 25 feet, the increased length lending a longer period of expansion for the explosion of the powder charge, and imparting a correspondingly higher momentum; secondly, in the fixed ammunition, which means a cartridge case in which a metallic sh.e.l.l encloses the powder charge, and is connected with the projectile, and third, in the great improvement and rapidity of action of the breech mechanism, which permits as many as eight rounds per minute to be fired. In Fig. 269 is shown a 6-inch rapid-fire gun of the United States Navy, loaded, and being sighted for fire. Rapid-fire guns of this cla.s.s represent the most effective form of modern ordnance. It was largely such rapid fire batteries of Admiral Dewey's squadron that swept the Spanish fleet out of existence at Manila, and that demolished the fleet of Cervera at Santiago by the awful hail of sh.e.l.ls poured into his ships. These relatively small guns throw a sh.e.l.l six miles, and the striking energy of their projectiles at the muzzle is equal to the penetration of iron plate 21 inches thick, or 16 inches of steel. When the gun is loaded, it is held in the forward position by coil springs, inclosed in cylinders and holding a recoil seat for the trunnions, and also has two pistons traveling in cylinders filled with glycerine. When the gun is fired, the recoil causes it to slide back, carrying the pistons, and the recoil is checked by the resistance of the glycerine traveling through an opening past the pistons. After full recoil, the gun is automatically returned to its forward position by the action of the coil springs, which are compressed during the recoil. The gun crew is protected by Harveyized steel plate 4 inches thick, and the gun is so delicately mounted on ball bearings that its great weight of 7 tons responds readily to the slight pressure in training the same.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 270.--RANGE OF SIXTEEN-INCH GUN.]

Powerful as these guns appear to be, their big brothers in the revolving turrets are far more so. While not so nimble in action, the great power of these guns of the main battery, and the elaboration and completeness of mechanism for operating them, for supplying them with ammunition, and for rotating the turrets, const.i.tute a complete world in ordnance in itself. As the gun increases in size, its cost both in construction and service increases in a greatly disproportionate ratio. A 6-inch breech-loading rifle costs $64.40 for each discharge, while a 12-inch gun costs $458 for each discharge. The largest guns of our battleships are of 13 inch calibre, and about 40 feet long, but larger ones are employed for sea coast defenses. The great 16-inch 126-ton gun, now building for the United States at the Watervliet a.r.s.enal, is 49 feet long, over 6 feet in diameter at the breech, and it will have an extreme range of over twenty miles. Its projectile will weigh 2,370 pounds, and it will cost $865 to fire the gun once. The accompanying view, Fig. 270, will give graphic ill.u.s.tration of the range of this gun. If fired at its maximum elevation from the battery at the south end of New York in a northerly direction, its projectile would pa.s.s over the city of New York, over Grant's Tomb, Spuyten Duyvil, Riverdale, Mount St. Vincent, Ludlow, Yonkers, and would land near Hastings-on-the-Hudson, nearly twenty miles away, as shown in our map, Fig. 271. The extreme height of its trajectory would be 30,516 feet, or nearly six miles. This means that if Pike's Peak, of the Western Hemisphere, had piled on top of it Mont Blanc, of the Eastern Hemisphere, this gun would hurl its enormous projectile so high above them both as to still leave s.p.a.ce below its curve to build Washington's Monument on top of Mont Blanc, as shown in Fig. 270.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 271.--RADIUS OF ACTION OF SIXTEEN-INCH GUN.]

_The Disappearing Gun._--The importance of secreting the location of the battery in coast defences, and the better protection of the gunners, have suggested a species of gun carriage which would permit the gun to be normally hidden behind and under the protection of the parapet, and be only temporarily elevated to a position above the parapet while firing. Various forms of this have been devised. General R. E. De Russy, Corps Engineers, U. S. A., devised such a carriage in 1835. Moncrieff, of England, was one of the first to put in practice such a form of carriage. United States patents covering this invention were granted him as follows: No. 83,873, November 10, 1868; No. 115,502, May 30, 1871, and No. 144,120, October 28, 1873. Its principle of operation was to utilize the force of the recoil as a power to raise the gun into firing position. The gun is fulcrumed in a lever frame provided with a counterpoise which more than balances the gun. When the gun is fired the recoil raises the counterweight, and the gun descends and is locked in its lower position. When loaded and released the counterpoise raises the gun again to firing position.

Among later gun carriages of this type of American construction may be mentioned those devised by Spiller, Gordon, Howell, and others, but the one most generally known is the Buffington-Crozier, covered by patents No. 555,426, February 25, 1896, and No. 613,252, November 1, 1898. This carriage, sustaining the 8 and 10 inch breech-loading rifles at Fort Wadsworth for the defence of New York harbor, is shown in Figs. 272 and 273, Fig. 272 representing it in its lowered position, and Fig. 273 in its elevated position for firing. The trunnions of the gun rest in bearings at the upper ends of the pair of levers, which latter are fulcrumed near the middle to horizontally sliding carriages connected to hydraulic cylinders that move backward as the gun recoils. These cylinders move over stationary pistons which have orifices that allow the liquid to pa.s.s from one side of the piston to the other. As the gun recoils and the levers turn to the horizontal position, the forward ends of the levers are made to raise vertically an immense leaden counterweight, weighing 32,000 pounds, which ordinarily over-balances the weight of the gun on the levers. This cylindrical counterweight is seen raised on the left of Fig. 272. In firing, the energy of the recoil is absorbed partly by raising the counterweight, and partly by the resistance of the hydraulic cylinders, and when the gun reaches its lowest position it is caught and retained by pawls. After loading the pawls are tripped, and the greater gravity of the counterweight raises the gun to firing position again. Ten shots from an 8-inch gun on this carriage have been fired in 12 minutes 21 seconds.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 272.--BUFFINGTON-CROZIER DISAPPEARING GUN, LOWERED.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 273.--BUFFINGTON-CROZIER DISAPPEARING GUN, ELEVATED FOR FIRING.]

_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 b.a.l.l.s 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 sh.e.l.ls 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 b.a.l.l.s until its supply of cartridges is exhausted.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 sh.e.l.ls 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 cla.s.s, and the first which attained any notoriety. Foolhardy as it might appear, Yankee genius was led to believe that dynamite sh.e.l.ls 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 sh.e.l.l, 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 sh.e.l.l in barrel G. The front of barrel A is connected to the rear of barrel G behind the dynamite sh.e.l.l 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 sh.e.l.l 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 275.--DYNAMITE GUN, DUDLEY'S PATENT, JULY 23, 1889.]

_Small Arms._--Pistols and guns are the two cla.s.ses into which the layman divides small arms, although in latter years this cla.s.sification 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 navely states that it has round chambers for round b.a.l.l.s, designed for Christians, and square chambers, with square b.a.l.l.s, 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 c.o.c.king by a pawl on the hammer engaging a ratchet on the end of the cylinder.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 276.--SMITH & WESSON REVOLVER DISCHARGING Sh.e.l.lS.]

Various types followed, such as the old pepper box, patented by Darling April 13, 1836; the self-c.o.c.king pepper box, patented by Allen, No.

3,998, April 16, 1845; the four sliding barrels of Sharp, No. 6,960, December 18, 1849, and many others. The most popular and successful, however, of the succeeding types is that of Smith & Wesson, shown in Fig. 276, and covered by many patents. One of its most important features is the simultaneous extraction of the sh.e.l.ls by an ejector, having a stem sliding through the cylinder. This was the invention of W.

C. Dodge, patented January 17, 1865, No. 45,912, re-issue No. 4,483, July 25, 1871. In Fig. 277 is shown Smith & Wesson's latest pattern of Hammerless Safety Revolver, with automatic sh.e.l.l extractor and rebounding lock.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 277.--SMITH & WESSON SELF ACTING HAMMERLESS REVOLVER.]

The latest development in this cla.s.s of arms is the _automatic magazine pistol_, designed for the use of the officers of the German army, and adapted to fire ten shots in as many seconds. Only a slight pressure on the trigger is necessary, as it is not required to perform the work of turning any other part by the trigger, as is the case in the self-c.o.c.king revolver. The pressure of gas at each explosion does all the work of pushing back the closing piece of the breech through the recoil of the sh.e.l.l, extracts and ejects the sh.e.l.l, c.o.c.ks the hammer, and also compresses recuperative springs, which effect the reloading and closing of the weapon, all of these functions being performed in proper sequence at each explosion in a fraction of a second. The act of firing thus prepares the pistol for the next shot automatically. In Fig. 278 are shown two makes of pistol of this type. No. 1 is known as the Mauser (United States patent No. 584,479, June 15, 1897); No. 2 shows it with an extemporized stock, to be used as a carbine in firing from the shoulder. This stock is hollow and forms the holster or case for the pistol. At No. 3 is shown the Mannlicher pistol (United States patent No. 581,296, April 27, 1897), which is another form of the same type. In the Mauser the breech moves to the rear during recoil. In the Mannlicher the barrel moves to the front, leaving s.p.a.ce for a fresh cartridge to come up from the magazine below. The calibre of this pistol is 0.3 inch, and the initial velocity 1,395 feet. At 33 feet the ball pa.s.ses through 10 inches of spruce, at 490 through 5 inches, and its extreme range is 3,000 feet, or more than half a mile. When empty it is quickly re-charged with cartridges, which are made up in sets of ten in a case and inserted in one movement.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 278.--AUTOMATIC PISTOLS.]

_Breech-Loading Guns._--Although the breech-loading principle was well known prior to the Nineteenth Century, it remained for this period to give it effective development. The first United States patent for a breech-loading gun was to Thornton and Hall, May 21, 1811. It was a flint lock, and many of these arms were made at Harper's Ferry Armory in 1814, and issued to the troops, one being given by order of Congress to each member of Congress to take home with him to show to his const.i.tuents. The present style of break-down gun was invented by Pauly, in France, and is to be found in his British patent No. 3,833, of 1814.

Lefaucheux, of Paris, however, made this form of gun practical.

Minesinger, in United States patent No. 6,139, February 27, 1849, supplied the important improvement of making the front edge of the metallic cartridge sh.e.l.l thinner than elsewhere, so as to expand by the pressure of the exploding charge, and swell to a tight fit of the barrel. The Maynard rifle, first patented May 27, 1851, No. 8,126, was one of the earliest practical forms of breech-loaders.

_Magazine Guns._--Walter Hunt's United States patent No. 6,663, August 21, 1849, was the first on a magazine firearm of modern type. It had a sliding breech block carrying the main spring and firing pin. The Spencer rifle was one of the early ones that came into use. This had a row of cartridges in the stock, and was first patented March 6, 1860, No. 27,393. It was this weapon which in the Civil War gave proof of the deadly efficacy of the breech-loading magazine gun, and its superiority to the old style military arm. Another type of magazine firearm which in the last half century has gained great prominence and popularity is the so-called "Winchester." This has its cartridges arranged in a tube below and parallel with the barrel, and they are fed in a column to the rear by a helical spring as fast as they are used up at the breech. The pioneer of this type is the arm patented by Smith & Wesson February 14, 1854, No. 10,535, re-issued December 30, 1873, No. 5,710. This was subsequently improved as to the extractor by B. F. Henry in patent No.

30,446, October 16, 1860, re-issued December 7, 1868, No. 3,227, and was manufactured and favorably known for many years as the _Henry rifle_.

This rifle was also used in the Civil War. O. F. Winchester subsequently re-organized it in patent No. 57,808, September 4, 1866, and the arm in late years has taken his name.

_The Needle Gun_, of Prussia, represents an early form of breech loader, and may be considered the prototype of the modern bolt gun. The needle gun has in the place of the swinging hammer a rectilinearly sliding bolt, carrying in front a needle which pierces the charge and ignites the fulminate by its friction. Its construction permits the fulminate to be placed in advance of the powder, which thus burns from the front, and is entirely consumed in the gun, instead of being partially blown out of the gun, as may occur when ignited in the rear. The needle gun was invented by Dreyse in 1838, was first introduced about 1846, and gave effective service in the Prusso-Austrian war of 1866. The _Cha.s.sepot_, brought out in 1867, United States patent No. 60,832, was a French development of the Prussian needle gun.

About 1879 two forms of magazine guns appeared which have become types for most all subsequent guns of this cla.s.s. Both of them employed the bolt system as previously embodied in the needle gun, but added to it the magazine principle and changed the method of supplying and feeding the cartridges. One was the invention of James Lee, and the other was the joint invention of Colonel Livermore, of the Corps of Engineers, and Major Russell, of the Ordnance Department, U. S. A. In the Lee, whose name has been much in evidence in late years, there was a relatively small detachable box (see Fig. 279) capable of holding five cartridges and designed to be filled and then placed in a slot opening centrally under the gun, below the receiver, and directly in front of the trigger guard. A spring within the magazine fed the cartridges up into alignment with the barrel. Lee's first patent was No. 221,328, November 4, 1879.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 279.--LEE'S MAGAZINE RIFLE, PATENTED NOVEMBER 4, 1879.]