Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 90.djvu/748

 732

��Popular Science Monthly

���When encased in this body of steel the diver can descend to great depths and work with safety

��A Steel Body with Arms and Legs for the Diver

A DIVING suit, recently devised for deep-sea diving, is constructed of steel to enable the diver to work at depths of more than two hundred feet, at which point the pressure is about eighty-eight pounds to the square inch. One new fea- ture of the suit illustrated is the position of the arms, which are placed well forward instead of in the usual place at the sides. This is supposed to give him greater lift- ing power when weights are to be raised above his head. A telephone apparatus within the suit keeps the diver in communi- cation with the surface at all times.

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��One of the many safety devices for the hammerless gun. It is not foolproof

��Safety First as Applied to the Hammerless Gun

AS usually made, the hammer- . less gun has a little catch on the tang which operates to lock the triggers of the gun when it is on the "safe" notch. Most guns operate this automatically as the top lever is pushed over. But the catch merely locks the triggers, and the gun can cheer- fully jar off from a heavy fall, sufficient to knock the strikers out of notch with the internal sears.

Fine foreign guns have little intercepting sears in addition to the main sears, and these if not deliberately put out of the way by a pull on the trigger, reach over and collar the hammer if it falls from a jar.

An American inventor has im- proved an old British design by locking the gun against firing until it is both at the shoulder, and is gripped by the right or firing hand. A light rod runs through the stock from a mov- able butt-plate, which is pressed in when the gun is put to the shoulder, and releases a trigger lock that puts itself on auto- matically. Another lock is moved by means of a light, easily moved steel slip lying in the grip of the gun. Until both of these locks are moved, the gun cannot be fired.

Locking the firing mechanism until pres- sure is put on the butt of the gun is a British scheme a quarter-century old, but it is hardly worth its cost because if the gun should fall, as out of a wagon, and hit on the butt, it would unlock itself just in time to fire from the jarring off of the sears that usually follows a heavy blow on the butt of any hammerless. Also, the gun can be fired while resting on the ground, and the muzzle covered by the hand of the shooter. The combination grip and butt safety would guard against any such accident, but the cost of installation is prohibitive.

A gun is never really safe until unloaded.

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