Evening star., 1918-06-30
Copyright. 1918. by Frank G. carpenter.)

SPRINGFIELD, Mass.
6N HE great war of today consists
Of killing man by machinery.
This letter has to do with
some Of the dead1iest ma
chimes used on the battlefield.
1t is war of mechanics. This let
ter has to do with training the ex-
perts who show the mechanics how
to handle the machines.
It is a war Of inventions for the
spreading of death and destruction.
This letter has to do with the great
est Of such inventions and the man
Who created it; a man who ranks to
modern gunnery as Edison does to
electricity and Eel. to the telephone.
The letter is about the machine
gun, and especially the new Brown
tngs. and the man who invented them.
It tells also about the new school
which Uncle Sam has created to train
teachers to show our soldiers how to
use the guns in fighting the Germans.
X X
i shall take up first the story Of
the new machine gun inventor. His
4s&kAO yoo w llOt uuu la Tic
can Who's Who, or in any encyclo-
pedis. Still he has been the inventor
Of nearly all of the Winchester rifles
from that of 1873 to that of 1906. He
is tie man who perfected the Stevens
twelve-gauge repeating shotgun. and
who invented the Remington auto
loading rifle. He is the originator Of
the Colt automatic gun, which is used
jp mani of the armies, and the de-
signer Of the Colt automatic pistol.
Q1 which over million are in
the hands IF our soldiers. More than
all he is the inventor of the new
machine guns which we are now max
ing in quantities for our men in the
field, and OF the airplane rifle. which
Will shower from above death and
destruction at the rate of LOGO shots
to the minute.
desert highlands of Utah, and his
home Is at Ogden only a gunshot or
30 from Salt Lake City: He has been
in his laboratory there since he took
out his first patent in 1880. That
vas for the Winchester single shot
rifle, and he made 600 of those rifles
in his little shop there from forgings
shipped in from the east A little
winchester company, and since then
the Winchester rifle has been known
all over the world. Later on Mr..
browning invented other Winchesters;
the Remington auto-loading shotgun,
and he was decorated in 1914 by the
King Of Belgium when the number Of
automatic pistols made at the factory
Sa1s sGs adS Trssea os s Sees
ing Automatic pistol. IT is among
the greatest assets we have in the
war.
Browning is now in Connecticut.
where he spends great deal Of
time at the various factories, SUPER
yisfng his inventions. He is not easy
to meet, and his modesty is such that
he is not interviewed. He has been
Yankee who minds his own business
: and cares for but little outside his
work. There is one thing sure. and
that is that he is patriot and not
pronteering upon the United States
government. His inventions are SO
much used that his normal royalties
On those used by the Army and Navy
would be more than million dollars
= week. He has given all of them to
the government, for the term of the
half of that sum. The actual price
named was $1,500.000, or as much as
he might have collected in the space
Of ten days But upon that came an
income tax of 80 per cent, or $500, 900,
making his actual receipts from this
nfllion-a-week possibility total Of
enly 100000 for the whole term of
the war. I am told this in Springfield
by men who should know.
The idea of gun to shoot by
machinery is not new. There is a
double barrel bronze gun In the Bos-
ton navy yard which was captured
in Korea in 1870. and it has Chinese
Inscription upon it showing that 1t
was made in 1907. It weighs four
teen pounds. or one pound less than
the light Browning. 1t is double
barreled. and it was so made that
three shots in succession could be
fred from each barrel. Long before
our revolutionary war attempts at
machine guns were made in England,
and In 1862, while we were still fight
ing the Indians with old fiintlocks,
Pepys wrote in his diary that there
had just been exhibited in London q
gun that, without reloading, would
discharge seven shots in succession.
xk
The guns of that time were called