tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6322916946732811685.post419772043364253223..comments2024-03-28T16:31:54.494-04:00Comments on Borepatch: Automatic pistols, the Burgess Shale, and the evolution of designBorepatchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05029434172945099693noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6322916946732811685.post-70977989018390829312010-02-07T17:07:26.982-05:002010-02-07T17:07:26.982-05:00Great post, thanks.
a couple of clarifications th...Great post, thanks.<br /><br />a couple of clarifications though.<br /><br />I think complex and expensive manufacture was the Luger's main downfall (something like over 800 seperate machining ops -that's a lot of machinery, tooling, tool setters and operatives for one pistol, when a sten can be made at home and is far more effective as a fighting tool). as a gun, it actually lasts a lot longer and remains accurate for many more thousands or tens of thousands of rounds than a Browning style locked breech pistol.<br /><br />As to the semi rim, the early Luger 9mm chambers were stepped, the case originally headspaced on a tiny bottleneck shoulder. I'm not sure who came up with the idea of headspacing on the front of the case, or when.<br /><br />I still can't explain why it took Colt so long to headspace .38 Supers on the case mouth though.<br /><br />The schwarzlose blow-forward still has progeny available, in the form of semmerlings from texas derringer: six shots of .45 ACP in a pistol not much bigger than a .25 auto (it survives-just, in a specialist niche).<br /><br />The Fosberry also has surviving progeny, from Mateba.<br /><br />Arguably, we still have dinasaurs too - they have feathers.<br /><br />The autopistol (and particularly service rifle) show other interesting paralells with evolving critter;<br /><br />You get all sorts of interesting specialist extremes in the stable good times(think Canadian Ross, US Krag, British SA80) however when times get bad, they are not long in dying off. <br /><br />In bad times the gun equivalent of rats, roaches and humans (cheap, nasty, generalist vermin) eg stens and PPSh s prosper<br /><br />however, in the small, protected environments of Government Bureaucracies, arses get covered and mistakes are perpetuated. A bit like soft bodied graptolites surviving on the Northern pennine blocks into the mid Carboniferous E2, long after they'd gone extinct in the rest of the world - or evolved into calcaraeous framed Bryazoans - depending on your point of view.<br /><br />ps, apologies for the graptolite thing, I don't often get to brag about finding the last one known!Keithnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6322916946732811685.post-90094437485360619682010-02-06T14:14:28.741-05:002010-02-06T14:14:28.741-05:00Did I write “two sense?” Good God, man, where’s my...Did I write “two sense?” Good God, man, where’s my coffee?孔夫子, the Œcumenical Volgi (The Notorious ŒV)https://www.blogger.com/profile/00042969409766681099noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6322916946732811685.post-49766516144502181122010-02-06T14:13:37.069-05:002010-02-06T14:13:37.069-05:00As one who knows a fair bit out firearms history, ...As one who knows a fair bit out firearms history, I’ll add my two sense and say that you’re absolutely correct. It also links to an political-economic insight that I think I ran across in Hayek (or was it Mises?) years ago on why you want to have as open an economy with start-up—and more importantly, re-start-up—costs low:<br /><br />Most experiments fail.<br /><br />Consequently, you want to make sure that those experimenters (one of whom could someday hit on a successful solution, if there's one to be found) have easy access to capital, low legal and regulatory barriers to entry, and liberal bankruptcy provisions.<br /><br />The last, incidentally, was one of the many things European states—with their workhouses and poor laws—mocked about the early American republic; but the Founders got it—failing once doesn't brand you with failure.<br /><br />The firearms industry is a particularly good example of this—try and keep track of all the gun companies that have winked in and out of existence since, oh, 1950 some time. It's not easy. Take it back to the 19th century like your handgun models and you're talking the stuff of fat reference books (which are incomplete). (As Mr. dB notes, cars, planes, and computers are other very good examples.)<br /><br />And, of course, watch designs and—like evolution seems to spread successful traits throughout populations—you can see designers borrowing other successful designs, tweaking them, and on and on ad infinitum.孔夫子, the Œcumenical Volgi (The Notorious ŒV)https://www.blogger.com/profile/00042969409766681099noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6322916946732811685.post-87769972392278678512010-02-06T01:33:45.304-05:002010-02-06T01:33:45.304-05:00I just found this in my refers, and I thank you fo...I just found this in my refers, and I thank you for your kind words.<br /><br />Just wanted to mention that the original image of Hallucigenia with the spikes on the bottom and the tentacles on top was later realized to be wrong. The tentacles are legs and go on the bottom. The spikes are for defense. Once this was realized, it also turned out that Hallucigenia landed squarely in a known group of creatures.<br /><br />That happened after "Wonderful Life" was published, but Gould talked about it in one of his articles in Nature, and it ended up in one of his collections.<br /><br />The wikipedia article you linked to describes that and includes a more modern reproduction of the critter.<br /><br />In the mean time, there's no doubt that you're right that the "early experimentation, later standardization" happened in automatic weapons just as it did in cars, and airplanes, and computers for that matter.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6322916946732811685.post-86614542373986740832010-02-04T14:01:19.416-05:002010-02-04T14:01:19.416-05:00Hardly a strange post! A great one.
Yeah those e...Hardly a strange post! A great one.<br /><br />Yeah those early were strange. There's also some oddities that still persisted, such as why if Luger seemed to do just fine with a rimless case, why did Browning still insist on making many of his cartridges semi-rimmed like .32 ACP, .25 ACP, and .38 Automatic, all of which still persist today (tho the latter as .38 Super Automatic, in the +P configuration of the original) <br /><br />Also besides strange actions, there were a ton of pistols that loaded from stripper clips into fixed magazines! Hard to imagine these days.Weer'd Beardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13528978001340070552noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6322916946732811685.post-32889552939408971182010-02-04T12:52:48.585-05:002010-02-04T12:52:48.585-05:00Anyone interested in paleo should have a copy of t...Anyone interested in paleo should have a copy of the BBC show "Ultimate Dinosaur Collection" which devotes a respectable amount of time to the Paleozoic and some of the cool beasties that lived then. Decent science, good FX, and fun presentations all around.<br /><br />And nowadays I believe I've read somewhere that they've turned Hallucagenia upside down as compared to the presentation in Wonderful Life and it makes more sense.<br /><br />Old friend of mine from back in grad school got a chance to sing with SJG in a local chorus before he died - said he has a gorgeous voice.<br /><br />Paleontology/geology - one of my buttons. :)Atom Smasherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01717946941636575857noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6322916946732811685.post-25816923598377211442010-02-04T07:32:19.642-05:002010-02-04T07:32:19.642-05:00Excellent post. "Wonderful Life" remains...Excellent post. "Wonderful Life" remains one of my favorite reads from Gould, a gem among gems. The Cambrian Explosion is such a fantastic illustration of the start-point of so many things, when an environment is capable of supporting so much variation... until "what works better" eclipses "what works."<br /><br />Good read. Thanks!scotakuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10039821847038236789noreply@blogger.com