The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-06-09

Hartford. Conn
 17HAvE come to Hartford to tell you
 about the automatic pistol whict
 lS is doing such good work in the
 hands of our boys in the trenches.
 1t Is the favorte American weapon ius,
 as the knife is the favorite weapon nj
 the Italian and the hand grenade that
 of the German. The latter choice is
 9necause the German does not know how
 to shoot.
 More than one million of these auto- natlcs are already in the hands of our
 soldiers, and each has eight shots for
 the Kaiser In all they have 5000 GOO bull
 Iets ready to fire, and hundreds of mil dions more in reserve in clips for imme- sdiate use.
 During my stay here I have had g rchance to see what these pistols will do < One of the best shots of the United , States is MT. A. J. Geskie of Connecti- E. cut, the head of the target division of g. the Colt Firearms Manufacturing com ?, pany. He gave me an exhibition of the :. pistol, firing it in half-dozen different i ways. He started in with an automatic 2 in leather holster strapped tight to 5 his side, just as it is carried by the .i soldier while in the trenches. The leath- :. CT top was fastened, but Mir Gesl<ie Z urbuttoned the flap, grabbed out the . gun and fired seven shots in the space 1! of three seconds. He next picked LID a pistol from table and fired seven shots i. in one second, the cartridges going off . so fast that I could hardly count the individual sounds. He then shot at a mark 45 yards away, and sent seven : bullets in a bulrs-eye as big around as the bottom of tin cup. It took him only F second by my watch to aim and shoot Later he shot seven shots in s seconds ha hiI aI, time.
 I am told that MT. Geskie can take seven cartridges in his left hand and the pistol, loaded with seven more, in his. right He can throw the seven loose cartridges in rapid succession into the air to the height of a two or three
 story house, and hit an average of five
 out of seven of them before they come
 down. In this case most of the cart
 ridges will explode when hit, and those
 that are struck on the end of the bull
 let crushed when they reach the
 ground. He has record of having shot
 156 cartridges with his pistol in the space of one minute, and has put 21 shots into an 1S-inch ''bull' within eight seconds. Anyone that knows anything about pistol shooting will tell you that this is going some."
 This pistol is the one adopted by the United States government for the use of the army. It is known as the Colt automatic, caliber .45, government model. It is the invention of J. M. Browning of Ogden, Utah-the same man who in- vented the Browning machine guns, which are now being used by our army. It is smaller, lighter and more easily handled than other makes of revolvers of the same caliber, which it is rapidly diSplacing; and it is much more effi- | cient in the hands of the soldiers. The | gun weighs just about two and one-half | pounds, and the barrel is about five | inches long- The length of the barrel l and handle is eight and one-half inches, l and the handle is so shaped that it con- tains seven cartridges. which are auto matically forced into the gun, one fly | ing out each time that the trigger is
 pulled. The gas exploding the first cartridge is the motive power which throws the second into position, and the same is done with the other cart ridges each time the trigger is pulled. In addition, another cartridge may be put in the barrel, making the capacity of the gun eight cartridges for the first fire.
 The chief parts of the pistol are the receivar which holds the cartridges the barrel and the slide The gun shoots bullets about fifty per cent heavier than those used in the rifle, and at an angle of 45 degrees it has range of more I will shoot straight for distance Of more than one-third of a mile; and it can be loaded and fired so rapidly that it is invaluable to our, men in de- fense and in going over the top. In deed, one man has fired 1000 shots with this pistol in thirty-eight minutes In another test 10000 shots were fired from one gun without cleaning. and after eha1 in of cn cartridges was snot at fa"c 2ad ere}y ball struck the bull oge
 Thc-- lietoss aie now being made by the ral- F earns Manufacturing com pan he a Hartford. The same firm has been making firearms for the armies of the United States and other countries for several generations It was founded by the man who invented the revolver. This was Samuel Colt , The son Of a Massachusetts silk manufac- turer, Young Colt was sent to Amherst to school, but he grew tired of his books : and shipped before the mast in sailing I vessel from Boston to Calcutta It was : while on this trip that he whittled out i the first model of the revolver which l f later became known from one end of the ( world to the other. Upon his return he tried to interest his father in his in- r vention. but the old man put him to I work in the dyeing and bleaching de- s I there he had to study chemistry, and r within the course of a year was able 2 10 start out as a lecturer on the won- y ders of science. He did this at eight V cen years Of age, assuming the title t of tDr. Coult' as his stage name He a made so much out of his lectures that ne was able to take out patents for his a -evolve-, and within a few years there t liter he had established firearms fac d ory at Paterson, N. J., and was mak- r ng the revolvers which our troops first l 1T lsed in the Mexican war. Later he got | n other contracts with the United States p and foreign powers, and during the U civil war he furnished thousands of e 'istols and guns for the Union army. l' n the meantime he had removed his T actory from Paterson to Hartford and II ormed the foundation of one of the v argest firearms plants of the United a itates. It is of this plant I am writing - oday. It is now making machine guns. " 'clt automatic revolvers and the Colt v, utomauc pistol invented by Browning l s, consists of many great buildings Of rick and steel. Its floor space covers 1 n; cres and the number of men and ., vomen employed runs high into the a, housands. Included in them is an army a,