The age-herald., 1898-08-10
EVOLUTION OF
 THE REVOLVER
From the Philadelphia Inquirer.


 | tween the Germans and the French, in lo4o, swords and pistols have been the recognized | equipment of horse soldier
 | In England, France and Germany, the service pistol is of a fixed and definite form 1 and calfbre, but in the United States no 1 such uniformity prevails The government
 does not supply any of its officers with slde- | arms. so the American follows his own | preference in the selection of his pistols. | These vary both in calibre, make and style' | and there are still in use on board some or
 our warships boarding pistols of a cum | brous, one-fire pattern, which went out or | date twenty years ago.
 | But some sort of a pistol always appears
 as a part of the army officers equipment One of the British correspondents who ac- | companied the Gussie expedition to Ca | banas, wrote home: "Of the officers, some | wore a sword, some did not, though all carried revolvers." No orders had been issued on the subject; it was left to indi- vidual taste. There have been from time to | time efforts made to have the government secure uniformity in this matter by the selection of some definite type and caliber
 revolver, but so far. it has never been nd of late there has been tendency t1 suo=sffate sword and carbine for sword and pisfs among our horse soldiers
 The act date at which the pistol first l made IS appearance a weapon Is not certainly known The earliest hand-gun of ID there is a specimen extant is fire
 lock A combination pistol and iron club, ul iIs about 1510 Is preserved in one of the ! Earopean museums. In firing. it was held
 a arms length and operated by blazing , stick, applied to the touch-hole. Once dis | charged, it could be used only as club :. The modern revolver as a matter of fact, | is the first pistol really useful in battle for | more than one discharge. At Marston | Moor Q64D the cavaliers discharged their | pistols and flung them at each others | heads" At the battle of Wittenmergen, in | 162S the musketeers of the Duke of Weimer succeeded in firing their pieces seven times | in eight hours. It sometimes took minute | or two to fire wheel-lock after the firing l process had begun.
 | The evolution of the pistol can be traced | by the development of the lock. Its eari- | est form, the firelock was succeeded by the matchlock There is in the Tower of Lon l don matchock of 1550 The improvement | in the matchlock over the earlier form | consisted in the fact that the latter carried | its own self-burning slow match fixed on 1 the lock. These matchlock pistols were also | called seprentines, from the double curve or | the combined cock and trigger, which were | in one piece They were used by the Ger | man ritters at Rentz. They were nearly | three feet long and as awkward as can De l imagined yet the skill with which they were used against the French on this oc- i casion led. to their permanent adoption as part of the equipment of cavalrymen. The wheelloak made chiefly in Italy, at | Pistoia, which ia said to have originated me | name pistol" succeeded the matchlock.
 Its mechanism consisted of a cock. so called | from being generally modelled after the
 head of the barnyard rooster, holding l piece of pyrites in its beak, Ssiseh, on touching the trigger, was sprung back i.>t2 contact with the wheel in the lock- This | wheel was wound up beforehand by key, something like clock key, and when the trigger sprung the cock back, the spring of the wheel was simultaneously released, 1 and the pyrites in the cocks beak was brought into contact with the serrated edge of the whirrng wheel. succession of sparks followed as long the wheel re- volved, and some of them were tolerably | sure to reach the powder.
 | The pistols manufactured in the seven- | teenth century were far handsomer than any that are made today. Soon after the | discovery of gunpowder the medieval ar | morers set at the task of perfecting a l weapon in which to explode it. AS a. result
 of their efforts, the wheel-lock pistol was | evolved. There are now in private collec- | tions in this country and Europe several | fine specimens of these ancient wheel | locks, which are the despaiar of the arti- 1 ficers of today. Inlaid with ivory, gold l and silver in lock, stock and barrel, the | wheel-locks of that day well deserved the | name of precious weapons" They were l jeweled often at an enormous outlay. Such
 gunsmiths as Nicholas Bis, goldsmith to | Philip V. of Spain," charged forty pounds l sterling for a single pistol barrel, and | sometimes worked at one for year. The | wheel-ock, from the very complexity of 1 its firing mechanism, never came into gen. eral use. It was always a rich mans weapon.
 As the wheel-lock cost too much for the ordinary man, the file-lock was evolved l as poor mans pistol. It's inadequacy
 was evident that the prize gunsmiths 1 | where the finest medieval firearms were | made put their wits to work on an inn l provement. The flint-lock pistol was the | result, and the greatest wars and most | famous duels down to 1850 were all fought | with fiint-locks. It is claimed that the | honor of inventing the flint-ock belongs
 to a Spaniard named Miquelet, but there 1 is no convincing evidence of it. Certain 1t | is that the fint-lock was serviceable weapon for nearly two hundred years that | in 1860 officers of the United States army ! opposed substituting for the flint-lock the | thew fangled percussion lock-"
 The improvement on the flint-iock, which | led to the percussion lock, was covered by | English patents in the early part of this
 century. A illuminating composition was | first used to be exploded by the fall of | the cock, which had now become identical l with the hen or hammer. and this in turn 1 led to the patenting in England of tube, | and cap of illuminate to fit on the tube. | While some pistols were made under these | patents as early as 1S2O-'30, percussion cap | piStolc did mt come into general <pOUl-