Part 10

Improvements kept coming, however. Guns were lightened and bettered in shape. Somebody thought of putting a flash pan, for the powder, by the side of the touch-hole, and now it was decided to fasten the slow-match in a movable cock upon the barrel, and ignite it with a trigger. These matches were fuses of some slow-burning fiber, like tow, which would keep a spark for a considerable time. Formerly they had to be carried separately, but the new arrangement was a great convenience and made the match-lock. The cock, being curved like a snake, was called the “serpentine.”

About the time sportsmen were through wondering at the convenience of the match-lock, they began to realize its inconvenience. They found that they burned up a great deal of fuse, and were hard to keep lighted. Both statements were true, so inventors racked their brains again for something better. They all knew you could bring sparks with flint and steel, and that seemed an idea worth working on. A Nuremberg inventor, in 1515, hit on the wheel-lock. In this a notched steel wheel was wound up with a key like a clock. Flint or pyrite was held against the jagged edge of the wheel by the pressure of the serpentine. You pulled the trigger, then “whirr,” the wheel revolved, a stream of sparks flew off into the flash-pan, and the gun was discharged.

This gun worked beautifully, but it was expensive. Wealthy sportsmen could afford them, and so for the first time firearms began to be used for hunting. Some of these sixteenth and seventeenth century nabobs had such guns of beautiful workmanship, so wrought and carved and inlaid, that they must have cost a small fortune. You will find them in many large museums to this day.

But now the robbers had their turn. There are two stories of the invention of the flint-lock. Both deal with robbers, both have good authority, and both may be true, for inventions sometimes are made independently in different places.

One story runs that the flint-lock which was often styled “Lock à la Miquelet,” from the Spanish word, “Miquelitos”--marauders--told its origin in its name. The other is, that the flint-lock was invented in Holland by gangs of thieves, whose principal business was to steal poultry.

In either case the explanation is easy. The match-lock showed its fire at night and wouldn’t do for thieves, the wheel-lock was too expensive, so again necessity became the mother of a far-reaching invention.

Everybody knows what the flint-lock was like. You simply fastened a flake of flint in the cock and snapped it against a steel plate. This struck off sparks which fell into the flash-pan and fired the charge.

It was so practical that it became the form of gun for all uses; thus gunmaking began to be a big industry. Invented early in the seventeenth century, it was used by the hunters and soldiers of the next two hundred years. Old people remember when flint-locks were plentiful everywhere. In fact, they are still being manufactured and are sold in some parts of Africa and the Orient. One factory in Birmingham, England, is said to produce about twelve hundred weekly, and Belgium shares in their manufacture. Some of the Arabs use them to this day in the form of strange-looking guns with long, slender muzzles and very light, curved stocks.

There were freak inventors in the flint-lock period just as there are to-day. Some of them wrestled with the problem of repeating guns, and put together a number of barrels, even seven in the case of one carbine. Others tried revolving chambers, like our revolvers, and still others, magazine stocks. Pistols came into use in many interesting shapes, but these were too practical to be considered freaks.

~WHY WE CALL THEM PISTOLS~

Pistols, by the way, are named from the town of Pistola, Italy, where they are said to have been invented and first used.

We must not forget that rifling was invented about the time that the wheel-lock appeared, and had a great deal to do with the improvement of shooting. Austrians claim its invention for Casper Zollner, of Vienna, who cut straight grooves in the barrel’s bore. His gun is said to have been used for the first time in 1498, but the Italians seem to have still better warrant as these significant words appear in old Latin Italian, under date of July 28th, 1476, in the inventory of the fortress of Guastalla: “Also one iron gun made with a twist like a snail shell.” The rifling made the bullet spin like a top as it flew through the air, thus greatly improving its precision.

In the year 1807 the Rev. Alexander John Forsythe, LL.D., got his patent papers for something far better than even the steady old flint. He had invented the percussion system. In some form this has been used ever since. Which is to say that when the hammer of your gun falls, it doesn’t explode the powder, although it seems to. Instead it sets off a tiny portion of a very sensitive chemical compound called the “primer,” and the explosion of this “primer” makes the powder go off. Of course, the two explosions come so swiftly that your ear hears only a single bang.

Primers were tried in different forms called “detonators,” but the familiar little copper cap was the most popular. No need to describe them. Millions are still made to be used on old-fashioned nipple guns, even in this day of fixed ammunition.

But now we come to another great development, the Breech-loader.

THE MODERN SPORTSMAN WITH HIS AUTOMATIC RIFLE IS PREPARED FOR ALL EMERGENCIES]

Perhaps you have had to handle an old muzzle-loader. It was all right so long as you knew of nothing better, but think of it now that you have your beautiful breech-loader. Do you remember how sometimes you overloaded, and the kick made your shoulder lame for a week? Or how, when you were excited you shot away your ramrod? The gun fouled too, and was hard to clean, the nipples broke off, the caps split, and the breeches rusted so that you had to take them to a gunsmith. Yes, in spite of the game it got, it was a lot of trouble, now you come to think of it. How different it all is now!

Breech-loaders were hardly new. King Henry VIII of England, he of the many wives, had a match-lock arquebus of this type dated 1537. Henry IV of France even invented one for his army, and others worked a little on the idea from time to time. But it wasn’t until fixed ammunition came into use that the breech-loader really came to stay--and that was only the other day. You remember that the Civil War began with muzzle-loaders and ended with breech-loaders.

Houiller, the French gunsmith, hit on the great idea of the cartridge. If you were going to use powder, ball and percussion primer to get your game, why not put them all into a neat, handy, gas-tight case?

THE FIRST AMERICAN MADE GUNS

~HOW THE FIRST AMERICAN GUN WAS MADE~

Two men, a smith and his son, both named Eliphalet Remington, in 1816, were working busily one day at their forge in beautiful Ilion Gorge, when, so tradition says, the son asked his father for money to buy a rifle, and met with a refusal. The request was natural for the surrounding hills were full of game. The father must have had his own reasons for refusing, but it started the manufacture of guns in America.

Eliphalet, Jr., closed his firm jaws tightly, and began collecting scrap iron on his own account. This he welded skillfully into a gun-barrel, walked fifteen miles to Utica to have it rifled, and finally had a weapon of which he might well be proud.

In reality, it was such a very good gun that soon the neighbors ordered others like it, and before long the Remington forge found itself hard at work to meet the increasing demand. Several times each week the stalwart young manufacturer packed a load of gun-barrels upon his back, and tramped all the way to Utica where a gunsmith rifled and finished them. At this time there were no real gun-factories in America, although gunsmiths were located in most of the larger towns. All gun-barrels were imported from England or Europe.

A VISIT TO A CARTRIDGE FACTORY

~HOW AMMUNITION IS MADE~

One of the first shocks you get when you start your visit through a cartridge factory is the matter-of-fact way in which the operatives, girls in many cases, handle the most terrible compounds. We stop, for example, where they are making primers to go in the head of your loaded shell, in order that it may not miss fire when the bunch of quail whirrs suddenly into the air from the sheltering grasses. That grayish pasty mass is wet fulminate of mercury. Suppose it should dry a trifle too rapidly. It would be the last thing you ever did suppose, for there is force enough in that double handful to blow its surroundings into fragments. You edge away a little, and no wonder, but the girl who handles it shows no fear as she deftly but carefully presses it into moulds which separate it into the proper sizes for primers. She knows that in its present moist condition it cannot explode.

Or, perhaps, we may be watching one of the many loading machines. There is a certain suggestiveness in the way the machines are separated by partitions. The man in charge takes a small carrier of powder from a case in the outside wall and shuts the door, then carefully empties it into the reservoir of his machine, and watches alertly while it packs the proper portions into the waiting shells. He looks like a careful man, and needs to be. You do not stand too close.