The World's most powerfull Rifles and Handguns [antikvár]

POWER TENDS TO CORRUPT AND ABSOLUTE POWER COR-rupts absolutely.' When Lord Acton penned his now famous quotation in 1887, he was thinking of political authority. In the history of the world, political power has often grown from the barrels of guns. By possessing more ond bigger firearms, absolute firepower has given many politicians absolute notional, and more recently, global, authority.For many years, the quest for power through rifles and handguns was driven by the consumable needs of warring governments. The advent of nuclear weapons gave them an alternotive and vastly destructive capability. As a result of the so-called Nuclear Umbrella, military smailorms development has concentrated on small calibre, high capacity firearms with 'adequate' rather than absolute firepower. It has been left to sports people and firearms enthusiasts to develop more powerful hand- and shoulder-fired pieces in the second half of the 20th century.THE BEGINNINGFirearms designs ore many and diverse. However, they oil share one common feature, in that they burn a propellent in a closed chamber. This burning is exceedingly rapid and generates large quantities of hot gas. The gas pressure is contained behind a projectile, usually a bullet, which blocks the only way out of the chamber. When the pressure generated by the burning propellant is sufficiently high, the bullet is driven out of the chamber and down the gun's barrel.The first propellant used was gunpowder, now more commonly known as black powder. The explosive and propellant capability of black powder has been known since before the 14th century. It is widely accepted that the definitive recipe for gunpowder was recorded around 1320 by Berthold Schwartz, a monk living in Freiburg, Germany. Although the true origins of the propellant are unrecorded, the effect of various forms of saltpetre-based gunpowders have been noted since at least 275.Black powder is made from a ground-up mechanical mixture of 75% saltpetre (potassium nitrate), 15% charcoal and 10% sulphur, and the purity of the ingredients used determines how easily it ignites and the amount of gas it con generate. Early mixtures ignited errotically ond armies were forced to rely heavily on swords and bows instead of their slow, ponderous cannon, or primitive 'hand gonnes'. A dis-advontage of block powder as a propellant is that it actually burns slowly in modern terms, generating only moderate pressures and leaving behind substantial corrosive residues. To gain the maximum effect from black powder, large bore guns which fired very heavy projectiles were mode. The velocities of these projectiles ore now considered quite sedate, from 500 to 800 fps (150 to 250 mps), but the velocity combined with the weight still gave the projectile substantial 'muzzle energy' and destructive power.ABOVEThe needs of the military at the turn of the century created the 9mm Luger cartridge and the weapons which fired it. The first was George Luger's Parabellum P'08 pistol, foilowed a generation later by the P35 Browning.ABOVEThe influence of John Moses Browning on self-loading pistol design spanned a quarter of a century until his death in 1926. His last design was refined to become the Browning GP35. Chambered for 9mm Luger, it is still in service today.MUZZLE LOADINGUp until the 19th century, loading and firing black powder weapons was a slow and sometimes risky procedure. Most were loaded from the muzzle by pouring a measured charge of propellant down into the barrel, on top of which was rammed wadding to help seal in pressure, followed by a bullet or ball. Ignition of the powder was through a small hole known as a flash hole or touch hole at the closed breech end; it was accomplished by a spark from a flint in the most popular smailorms, or from a slow match for cannon. The dangers were that traces of still-glowing powder from o previous shot could set off the next charge before it was rammed or aimed, and flint ignition could be upset by inclement weather.PERCUSSION CAPSFirearms technology changed rapidly in the 19th century. The first significont development was in the use of metal fulminate compounds as detonators for gunpowder. The