TO RENDER RIFLE FIRE INAUDIBLE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3059, 2 December 1908, Page 4

TO RENDER RIFLE FIRE INAUDIBLE.

Rifles that shoot noiselessly and guns that hurl shells through the air without audible discharge promise to be the next invention that will be adopted by the United States War Department. Experiments recently made at Springfield, Massachusetts, in the use of the new gun-silencing device invented by Hiram Percy Maxim, showed that the location of a firing party in ambush could not be located at a distance of 250 yards. The tests, which are conducted before a board appointed by the commanding officer of the Springfield armoury, were made with the purpose of determining to what extent an attacking force could conceal its location while firing.. After the army officers had taken up their position near a bank of sand, the rifleman was taken to four different points of the compass, at a distance of 250 to 700 yards, from each of which he fired shots into the sandbank. In no case were the officers agreed as to the point from which the shot was fired, nor did any approximate to the truth. At short or moderate ranges it was found that the snap of the gun, the sound of which would travel these distances not much more slowly than the bullet, was rendered inaudible by the ping; but at a distance nt 1,500 yards the snap waa audible. The chief value of the invention, however, lies in its use for making heavy ordnance. The inventor is arranging to equip a modem 3-inch field-gun with a silencer, and it is believed tint if this proves satisfactory conditions of warfare wili be entirely changed.