Читать книгу Gun Digest 2011 онлайн

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As a historian and gun collector, I find the period most interesting to be that thirty-year stretch between 1884 and 1914. During this time we saw the invention of smokeless gunpowder and small bore Rifle cartridges, the perfection of bolt action repeating Rifles, semiautomatic pistols and fully automatic firearms. From the groundbreaking 8mm Lebel cartridge and Mauser’s Gewehr 98 Rifle to the Colt 1911 pistol and Maxim machine gun, many of the greatest advances in firearms technoltechnology occurred during this three-decade time span.

But another firearm was perfected during this era that has garnered little of the attention lavished upon its contemporaries: the double action (DA) revolver. While DA revolvers were nothing new, having been around since the 1850s, in the 1890-1910 period the newly perfected swing-out cylinder unloading/reloading system was combined with improved DA trigger mechanisms to produce the modern revolver as we know it today. In fact, I believe I’m on firm ground when I state that except for magnum cartridges and the use of high tech metals, there is little about the modern DA revolver that a firearms engineer from 1900 would find remarkable.