ELECTRIC MACHINE GUN IS SILENT (Nov, 1936)
Filed under: Origins, War — @ 7:56 am
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Nov, 1936
| Buy on Ebay
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Nov, 1936
| Buy on Ebay
This is a pretty cool looking rail gun.
ELECTRIC MACHINE GUN IS SILENT
Electricity replaces gunpowder in a silent, smokeless, machine gun recently perfected for defense against hostile aircraft. Without betraying its location, this weapon is declared capable of firing 150 bullets or high-explosive shells a minute. Projectiles are hurled from its muzzle by a series of electromagnets spaced along the barrel, which start the missile moving and successively raise its velocity as they become energized.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...
Actually, from the description given, it would be a coil gun, not a rail gun. A coil gun uses a series of electromagnets to propel the projectile down the barrel of the weapon. A rail gun uses a different effect called the Lorentz force.
Comment by avatar28 — April 18, 2007 @ 5:59 am
The wheel on the side is probably a commutator spun manually or electricly to energize the coils sequentially to accelerate each projectile.
Comment by jayessell — September 2, 2007 @ 7:05 am
that would look great mounted on my jeep…
Comment by Jeffery Wright — October 22, 2007 @ 1:56 pm
150 rounds per minute most coil guns you have to charge it with capacitors and then fire taking the rate of fire down to about 10 rounds per minute
Comment by slik — December 26, 2007 @ 9:47 am
Don’t believe the 30’s hype.
Comment by Chris Russell — December 29, 2007 @ 11:34 pm
If the comutator is most likely electrically turned to contact the circuits.
And if you use a high power pulse circuit precisely tuned and timed you can bypass any need for capacitors. because the caps are used in the circuits not of nesesity but because the caps have a faster discharge rate than the average battery or conventional power supply. with suficient pulse climb and timing the need for the caps disappears. another option is to switch the caps out just as fast as the coils are being fired for a recharge if caps are even used.
Comment by Dragon — April 9, 2008 @ 11:28 pm
slik, modern coil guns are capable of rapid fire, the only limitation being the ability to provide enough power to the capacitors, however newspapers back in the good old days always inflated the numbers for a better sale. I would say it’s perfectly plausible to have a 150 rpm coil gun given a large enough power source, however the m/ps of the projectile might not be much faster then throwing it by hand.
Comment by sdin — December 29, 2008 @ 3:20 am