AN ELECTRICAL GUN

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 215, 30 May 1918, Page 5

AN ELECTRICAL GUN

INTERESTING DEMONSTRATION. An electrical expert, with a number of ingenious inventions to his credit, demonstrated recently in London his reasons for believing that the Gorman "mystery gun" is an electrical contrivance. He' performed an experiment with the aid of two low-power dry batteries, an ordinary wired bobbin, and ii large French nail. The nail, lying across a couple of pencils to lessen friction in motion, was placed with one end just within the bobbin, and, with the aid of I'lio batteries, a current was rim through the coil. The result was that the nnil was drawn with great force :nto tho bobbin, until held there by tho current. A second experiment, however, showed that if tho current were cut off nlniont immediately the circuit was completed, tho nail was'thrown forward through tho bobbin into space. If for (lie bobbin you substitute an electrifiable gunbarrel of great length', divided into n number of sections independently wired, <ind if you .replace the nail bv a projectile, at the snmo time providing adequately powerful 'batteries, it should be possible- to develop enormous muzzle velocity by electrifying one spetion of the barrel after another in turn, the current being automatically cut ofF each section as soon as it luul given sufficient impetus to tho projectile to carry it to the next.