Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 08.djvu/68

LEFT RIFLE 50 RIFLE known three stages. The first stage might be said to have continued from the discovery of the principle of rifling up to the period of the successful production of the breech-loading rifle. In this stage, the muzzle-loading type of rifle reached was discovered and the area of modem rifle construction was issued in with the two great contributory aids of high ten- sion steel and smokeless powder. The superior quality and dependability of steel which offered varieties to every me- German Mauser RIFLES its highest perfection and led to the ad- vance from the ball form of cartridge to the sugar-loaf or elongated ball cartridge. In America this period extended to the time of the American Civil War. The Civil War and the impetus of western settlement and colonization pushed the rifle into high development and produced chanical requirement of the delicately adjusted machinery of the modern lever- action, bolt-action, and auto-action weap- ons, combined with the powerful advan- tages of smokeless powder which made possible the lightening of the barrel to- gether with more accurate and careful rifling, led to the production of our mod- colking * PIECE STRIKER 5 PR I NO BACKSIGHT I BRITISH LEE-ENFIELD RIFLE the Henry, Sharp, and Spencer rifles, all breech-loading weapons, and one, the Henry type, a lever-action gun, the an- cestor of the modern repeating rifle. The problem of the breech-loading rifle was the development of a mechanism suf- ficiently strong and relatively small to withstand the terrific concussion of black- powder cartridges. The third stage in rifle development was reached when the solution of the breech-loading weakness .era hunting and military weapons. Two aspects of importance have appeared in this third and present state in the de- velopment of the rifle; the emphasis upon the mechanics of repeating shots which has resulted in several types of magazine rifles and culminated in the automatic weapons which have combined speed of action with high shell capacity; and the several spheres of shell development which have produced the high-power, leng range