A NEW ANNIHILATING MACHINE.

Western Star, Issue 2215, 21 June 1898, Page 3

A NEW ANNIHILATING MACHINE.

Maxim guns, high explosives, and (he rocket associated with up-to-date warfare are soon to bo things of the past. Mr James Judd, an inventor of some celebrity, and the managing partner of the big Tyneside firm, the Walker Engineering and Galvanising Company, has patented a death dealing machine, which he reckons will, when perfected, discharge the trifling number of 30.000 bullets per minn<e. Mr Judd’s gun discharges its missies by centrifugal force, being, in fact, a marvellous development of the ancient sling- He has a disc working within a case at 15,000 revolutions per minute, a speed which has already been obtained in practice. From the circumference of the disc project two hands. The bullets are poured into the case from a hopper, and as they fall are caught by the hands, which in coming round rain them out in a continuous stream through an orifice. They are guided into a sleeve, which may be elevated or depressed, and sighted like the muzzle of a rifle. A great velocity may be obtained by the use of hand power, but the inventor’s idea is to nee his gun upon an armoured motor car, which should also have projecting blades like the war chariots of the ancients, with this difference : that they would be movable. The disc of the gun is about three feet in diameter, and as it travels at the rate of 15,000 revolutions per minute the circumferential rate is 15,000 ft. This would impel bullets with tremendous muzzle velocity, and at close quarters would, Mr Judd declares, mean absolute annihilation to an enemy. An imperfect machine has already been tested and found to answer the expectations of its inventor. A critic remarks that seems “ no theoretical objection to this murderous product of man’s ingenuity,” but it seems to me that once the gun got a man’s ranee it would pretty well fill up his body with lead before he could drop dead. Allowing only a fifth of a second between the first bullet’s impact and a man’s fall, the poor fellow would still get 100 bits of lead planted in him before be reached the ground, providing, that is, the successive bullets took approximately the same line of flight. This, of course, would mean a sad waste of lead, for one little half-ounce properly placed is all that most mortals require to render them hors de combat.