The mystery of the vanishing gun inventor

BBC ^ | 15 August 2013 | Steve Punt

[Second Amendment First]

Interesting bit of firearms history.

[cuban leaf]

[Oatka]

The Brits started early. This from 1718. The barrel was 3 feet (0.91 m) long with a bore of 1.25 inches (32 mm) and a pre-loaded "cylinder" which held 11 charges and could fire 63 shots in seven minutes. Besides being a breech-loader, it had the added benefit of having chambers to shoot round balls against Christians and square ones against the Turks, "to convince them of the benefits of Christian civilization."

[TurboZamboni]

If Chucky Schumer could time travel, he’d go back and hate on this guy.

[Second Amendment First]

I wonder how the square bullets worked.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

This reminded me of an old, humorous Russian short story, about a despondent and suicidal inventor, who the devil had successfully persuaded to commit suicide. But then the devil gets an impression from the man’s mind of the design of the, at the time, first fully automatic pistol.

Realizing its potential as a murderous weapon of war, suddenly the devil realizes that if the inventor commits suicide, the plans for the automatic pistol will be lost, and countless lives spared. So the devil has to do whatever he can and quickly, to convince the inventor to not commit suicide, that life is worth living.

This puts the devil in a most peculiar position of having to discreetly help the inventor find success, money, a wonderful wife, happy children, etc., for as long as it takes for him to complete his invention.

[gop4lyf]

Great book!

[Oatka]

I wonder how the square bullets worked.

Probably, due to windage, not too well, but it was a neat selling point ("That'll show 'em!")

I don't know if the barrel was smooth-bored or rifled, but if smoothbore, and the chambers loaded with shot, at 37MM, it would have made a nasty close-range weapon. Heck, put wheels on it and wheel it on the flanks of advancing ranks of infantry and you'd raise merry hell.

[Jimmy Valentine]

“We have no fear of the Hottentot, for we’ve the Maxim gun......and they do not.”

[DeFault User]

I wonder how the square bullets worked.

Probably well enough, unless the operator used the square chambers with the round barrel.

[Dead Corpse]

And be called out and done away with in a Duel.

A custom of honor we never should have done away with.

[SpeakerToAnimals]

The Guns of the South is a great read. AK-47’s in the Civil War, provided by time traveling South Africans.

[cuban leaf]

The Guns of the South is a great read. AK-47’s in the Civil War, provided by time traveling South Africans.

---

Yep. It’s also the only one of his books that I REALLY enjoyed. The rest are not bad, but I don’t think they are very good either.

[SpeakerToAnimals]

You are not the first one to tell me that.

[cuban leaf]

I actually bought (at garage sales and other sources) hard back copies of his books on alternate history for the first world war and the second world war (in the latter, space aliens attack during the war). But I felt like I was being strung along. Some themes started in one book didn’t reach completion until two books later. I read four and sold the rest of them to a second hand book store.

My time is too valuable.

[calex59]

I don't know if the barrel was smooth-bored or rifled, but if smoothbore, and the chambers loaded with shot, at 37MM, it would have made a nasty close-range weapon. Heck, put wheels on it and wheel it on the flanks of advancing ranks of infantry and you'd raise merry hell.

The Marines used 37MM canister rounds(shotgun rounds)with devastating effect against the Japanese on Guadalcanal.

[jboot]

A former friend of mine who was a giant lib and a CW reenactor who believed himself to be a CW expert would go into apoplectic fits if this book was even mentioned. He would complain to management if he saw it on the shelf in a store. He said it was racist trash like the Turner Diaries. It was like a crucifix to a vampire with him. Piqued my interest enough to read it, and it was fairly good. It got me to reading alternative history.

[Hiddigeigei]

Hiram Maxim’s son wrote a delightfully funny book called A Genius in the Family about growing up with his father. The old man was quite a character. He invented a number of other things. The son went on to invent the silencer for pistols.

It was Kitchener who said something to the effect of they have the numbers but we have the Maxim gun, before defeating the army of Abdullah al-Taashi in the Battle of Omdurman and securing control of the Sudan in 1898.

[Tijeras_Slim]

Up until the NFA of 1934, Marlin .22 lever action rifles could be ordered with Maxim silencers.

[jimt]

Is the author saying William Cantello and Hiram Maxim are one and the same ? Or what’s the point of the Cantello part of the story ?