John Moses Browning: The Life and Legacy of the American Gunsmith Who Modernized Automatic and Semi-Automatic Firearms
ISBN: 9781698519234
$9.99
*Includes pictures
*Includes a bibliography for further reading
The Industrial Revolution that unfolded in Western societies at the dawn of the 19th century altered daily life as a rapidly developing paradigm. One historian suggests that in Europe and America, the highest known form of technology was the pipe organ before the rise of factories, steam drive combustion, and railway and communication breakthroughs built upon the mastery of electricity and transformed the standard processes of society. Such a rapid alteration of the prevailing world seemingly took place in a historical instant that propelled technology all the way to the age of powered flight.
No less affected were the technological accomplishments that cast their influence over the wars so rampant in Europe through the past centuries. Military weapons benefited from various upgrades and innovations, even as the soldiers and generals remained confined within Napoleonic tactics while struggling to learn about the new principles of physics and engineering.
Technological advancement within the field of mechanical engineering experienced a golden age in the 19th century. Virtually every profession that worked in the traditional materials of wood and metal developed a capacity for precision and functionality hitherto unknown. In the arena of portable weaponry for both the military and civilian population, several new inventions with endless variations redefined American and international habits of sport and war, not to mention exploration and frontier survival. The traditional musket had changed little through the previous century, and the insatiable quest for a repeat-firing mechanism remained as the arms industry’s highest goal. The world knew that someone would find the solution and that future wars would occur, granting the nation to solve the riddle supremacy on the battlefield. The results of this pursuit were ushered in by several luminaries on the heels of an industrial revolution that had reshaped British industrial technology only a few decades prior.
*Includes a bibliography for further reading
The Industrial Revolution that unfolded in Western societies at the dawn of the 19th century altered daily life as a rapidly developing paradigm. One historian suggests that in Europe and America, the highest known form of technology was the pipe organ before the rise of factories, steam drive combustion, and railway and communication breakthroughs built upon the mastery of electricity and transformed the standard processes of society. Such a rapid alteration of the prevailing world seemingly took place in a historical instant that propelled technology all the way to the age of powered flight.
No less affected were the technological accomplishments that cast their influence over the wars so rampant in Europe through the past centuries. Military weapons benefited from various upgrades and innovations, even as the soldiers and generals remained confined within Napoleonic tactics while struggling to learn about the new principles of physics and engineering.
Technological advancement within the field of mechanical engineering experienced a golden age in the 19th century. Virtually every profession that worked in the traditional materials of wood and metal developed a capacity for precision and functionality hitherto unknown. In the arena of portable weaponry for both the military and civilian population, several new inventions with endless variations redefined American and international habits of sport and war, not to mention exploration and frontier survival. The traditional musket had changed little through the previous century, and the insatiable quest for a repeat-firing mechanism remained as the arms industry’s highest goal. The world knew that someone would find the solution and that future wars would occur, granting the nation to solve the riddle supremacy on the battlefield. The results of this pursuit were ushered in by several luminaries on the heels of an industrial revolution that had reshaped British industrial technology only a few decades prior.