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General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1859 Original Publisher: Printed by George E. Eyre and William Spottiswoode, pub. at the Great seal patent office Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: The most important improvement that has been made in firearms, since they were first invented, has, doubtless, been the adoption of the rifle barrel, whose introduction, as a military arm, Mr. Robins prophesied in 1743-4, would produce effects little less wonderful than those caused by the first introduction of firearms. The first Patent relative to rifled arms was taken out in England by one Arnold Rotsipen in 1635; but rifles appear to have been made at least 100 years before. It was not, however, until a very late period that the advantages of the rifle were fully appreciated, and its capabilities properly developed. The great improvements that have been recently adopted in the construction of rifled, revolving, and breech-loading fire-arms, and of rockets and various projectiles, are well known, and full particulars respecting them may be learned from the several Specifications referred to, under their respective heads, in the Index at the end of this work. These not only give an account of what has been done already, but they anticipate, as it were, the history of progress, and point out the course which it will take for many years to come. This is the case not only with this subject, but with every branch of the arts and manufactures in which improvements are discovered. All except a very few isolated instances, are made the subject of Letters Patent, and full descriptions of their nature, and the extent to which the makers of them hope to carry them, are contained in the Specification...