Pistol

PISTOL, a small fire-arm designed for quick work and personal protection at close quarters, and for use in one hand. It was originally made as a single- and also double-barrelled smooth bore muzzle-loader, involving no departure in principle from the ordinary fire-arms of the day. With the introduction of revol vers and breech-loading pistols and the application of "rifling" to musket barrels, came also, in the early half of the 19th century, the rifling of pistol-barrels.

Pistols are understood to have been made for the first time at Pistoia in Italy, whence they receive their name. Caminelleo Vitelli, who flourished in 154o, is the accredited inventor. The first pistols, in the 16th century, had short single barrels and heavy butts, nearly at right angles to the barrel. Shortly after wards the pattern changed, the butts being lengthened out almost in a line with the barrels. These early pistols were usually fitted with the wheel-lock (see GUN). Short, heavy pistols, called "daggs," were in common use about the middle of the 17th century, with butts of ivory, bone, hard wood or metal. A chiselled Italian dagg of 165o, for example, had a slightly bell nosed barrel of about 8in. in length and 14 bore. The German wheel-lock military pistols used by the Reiters, and those made for nobles and gentlemen, were profusely and beautifully orna mented. Pistols with metal hafts were common in the i6th and 17th centuries, many beautiful specimens of which, silver mounted, were made in Edinburgh and used by Highlanders. Duelling, when in vogue, caused the production of specially ac curate and well-made single-barrelled pistols, reliable at twenty paces. The pattern of this pistol seldom varied, its accuracy at short range equalling that of more modern ones, the principle of a heavy bullet and light charge of powder being employed. The first double-barrelled pistols were very bulky weapons made with the barrels laid alongside one another, necessitating two locks and two hammers. There was also the "over and under" pistol, one barrel being laid over the other. This was a more portable weapon, only requiring one lock and hammer, the second barrel being turned round by hand, after the first had been fired, or, as an alternative, the flash-hole being adjusted to the second barrel by a key. These pistols were first made with flint and

steel locks and subsequently for percussion caps. Double "over and under" pistols were also made with a trigger mechanism that served to discharge both barrels in turn.

Revolvers.

A revolver is a single-barrelled pistol with a re volving breech containing several chambers for the cartridges, thus enabling successive shots to be rapidly fired from the same weapon without reloading. The ordinary pistol has long been superseded by the revolver. The first revolver, fired with the percussion cap, was made with the whole of the barrels, six, seven or eight, revolving in one piece, and was known as the "pepper-box." It was "single action," i.e. the hammer was raised and the barrels revolved by the pull of the trigger. This weapon was cumbrous and no accurate aim could be taken with it owing chiefly to the strength and resistance of the main-spring and the consequent strong pull required on the trigger. The principle of a revolving breech to one barrel, which superseded the "pepper box," is an old one in the history of fire-arms, dating from the i6th century. At first the breech cylinder was revolved by hand, as in the revolving arquebus or matchlock, a specimen of which is now in the Tower of London, but this was subsequently improved by introducing geared mechanism, by which the pull of the trig ger or the cocking of the hammer, or both, do the work. There exists a pistol of the time of Charles I. which is rotated auto matically as the hammer is raised.

In 1814 a self-acting revolver mechanism of a crude pattern was produced in England. Four years later Collier used a sepa rate spring to rotate the chamber. In 1835, an American, Samuel Colt, produced and patented the first practical revolving pistol, the idea of which was obtained by him, it is stated, from an an cient "revolving" weapon in the Tower of London. The cham bers of the first Colt revolver were loaded with powder and bullets from the muzzle end, and each chamber had a nipple that required to be capped. It was the invention of the copper cap that made the Colt revolver possible. Under the old priming sys tem with exposed powder in a pan the difficulty of separate and effective ignition with the revolving cylinder was almost insuper able.