How It Began.
A naked savage found himself in the greatest danger. A wild beast,
hungry and fierce, was about to attack him. Escape was impossible.
Retreat was cut off. He must fight for his life--but how?
Should he bite, scratch or kick? Should he strike with his fist? These
were the natural defenses of his body, but what were they against the
teeth, the claws and the tremendous muscles of his enemy? Should he
wrench a dead branch from a tree and use it for a club? That would bring
him within striking distance to be torn to pieces before he could deal a
second blow.
There was but a moment in which to act. Swiftly he seized a jagged
fragment of rock from the ground and hurled it with all his force at the
blazing eyes before him; then another, and another, until the beast,
dazed and bleeding from the unexpected blows, fell back and gave him a
chance to escape. He knew that he had saved his life, but there was
something else which his dull brain failed to realize.
_He had invented arms and ammunition!_
In other words, he had needed to strike a harder blow than the blow of
his fist, at a greater distance than the length of his arm, and his
brain showed him how to do it. After all, what is a modern rifle but a
device which man has made with his brain permitting him to strike an
enormously hard blow at a wonderful distance? Firearms are really but a
more perfect form of stone-throwing, and this early Cave Man took the
first step that has led down the ages to the present-day arms and
ammunition.
This strange story of a development that has been taking place slowly
through thousands and thousands of years, so that today you are able to
take a swift shot at distant game instead of merely throwing stones.
The Earliest Hunters.
The Cave Man and his descendants learned the valuable lesson of
stone-throwing, and it made hunters of them, not big-game hunters--that
was far too risky; but once in a while a lucky throw might bring down a
bird or a rabbit for food. And so it went on for centuries, perhaps.
Early mankind was rather slow of thought.
At last, however, there appeared a great inventor--the Edison of his
day.
He took the second step.
A Nameless Edison.
We do not know his name. Possibly he did not even have a name, but in
some way he hit upon a scheme for throwing stones farther, harder and
straighter than any of his ancestors.
The men and women in the Cave Colony suddenly found that one bright-eyed
young fellow, with a little straighter forehead than the others, was
beating them all at hunting. During weeks he had been going away
mysteriously, for hours each day. Now, whenever he left the camp he was
sure to bring home game, while the other men would straggle back for the
most part empty-handed.
Was it witchcraft? They decided to investigate.
[Illustration: THE FIRST MISSILE
The Cave Man of prehistoric times unconsciously invented arms and
ammunition.]
What They Saw.
Accordingly, one morning several of them followed at a careful distance
as he sought the shore of a stream where water-fowl might be found.
Parting the leaves, they saw him pick up a pebble from the bank and
then, to their surprise, take off his girdle of skin and place the stone
in its center, holding both ends with his right hand.
Stranger still, he whirled the girdle twice around his head, then
released one end so that the leather strip flew out and the stone shot
straight at a bird in the water.
The mystery was solved. They had seen the first slingman in action.
The Use of Slings.
The new plan worked with great success, and a little practice made
expert marksmen. We know that most of the early races used it for
hunting and in war. We find it shown in pictures made many thousands of
years ago in ancient Egypt and Assyria. We find it in the Roman army
where the slingman was called a “funditor.”
We find it in the Bible where it is written of the tribe of Benjamin:
“Among all these people there were seven hundred chosen men left-handed;
_every one could sling a stone at an hair breadth and not miss_.”
Surely, too, you remember the story of David and Goliath when the young
shepherd “prevailed over the Philistine _with a sling and with a
stone_.”
Today shepherds tending their flocks upon these same hills of Syria may
be seen practicing with slings like those of David. Yes, and slings were
used in European armies until nearly a hundred years after America was
discovered.
Something Better.
Yet they had their drawbacks. A stone slung might kill a bird or even a
man, but it was not very effective against big game.
What was wanted was a missile to pierce a thick hide.
Man had begun to make spears for use in a pinch, but would you like to
tackle a husky bear or a well-horned stag with only a spear for a
weapon?
No more did our undressed ancestors. The invention of the greatly
desired arm probably came about in a most curious way.
Long ages ago man had learned to make fire by patiently rubbing two
sticks together, or by twirling a round one between his hands with its
point resting upon a flat piece of wood.
In this way it could be made to smoke, and finally set fire to a tuft of
dried moss, from which he might get a flame for cooking. This was such
hard work that he bethought him to twist a string of sinew about the
upright spindle and cause it to twirl by pulling alternately at the two
string ends, as some savage races still do. From this it was a simple
step to fasten the ends of the two strings to a bent piece of wood,
another great advantage, since now but one hand was needed to twirl the
spindle, and the other could hold it in place. This was the “bow-drill”
which also is used to this day.
A Fortunate Accident.
But bent wood is apt to be springy. Suppose that while one were bearing
on pretty hard with a well-tightened string, in order to bring fire
quickly, the point of the spindle should slip from its block. Naturally,
it would fly away with some force if the position were just right.
This must have happened many times, and each time _but once_ the
fire-maker may have muttered something under his breath, gone after his
spindle, and then settled down stupidly to his work. He had had a golden
chance to make a great discovery, but didn’t realize it.
[Illustration: THE SLING MAN IN ACTION
Practice developed some wonderful marksmen among the users of this
primitive weapon.]
But, so it has been suggested, there was one man who stopped short when
he lost his spindle, for a red-hot idea shot suddenly through his brain.
He forgot all about his fire-blocks while he sat stock still and
thought.
Once or twice he chuckled to himself softly. Thereupon he arose and
began to experiment.
He chose a longer, springier piece of wood, bent it into a bow, and
strung it with a longer thong. He placed the end of a straight stick
against the thong, drew it strongly back and released it.
The shaft whizzed away with force enough to delight him, and, lo, there
was the first bow-and-arrow!
What Came of It.
After that it was merely a matter of improvement. The arrow-end was apt
to slip from the string until some one thought to notch it. Its head
struck with such force that the early hunter decided to give it a sharp
point, shaped from a flake of flint, in order that it might drive deep
into the body of a deer or bear.
[Illustration: FEATHERING THE ARROW]
[Illustration: WINDING THE SHAFT]
But, most of all, it must fly true and straight to its mark. Who of all
these simple people first learned to feather its shaft? Was it some one
who had watched the swift, sure-footed spring of a bushy-tailed squirrel
from branch to branch? Possibly, for the principle is the same. At all
events with its feathers and its piercing point the arrow became the
most deadly of all missiles, and continued to be until long after the
invention of firearms.
A Great Variety.
It is interesting to see how many different forms of bow were used. The
English had a six-foot “long bow” made of yew or ash, in a single
straight piece, that shot arrows the length of a man’s arm. The Indians
had bows only forty inches on the average, since a short bow was easier
to handle in thick forests. They used various kinds of wood, horn or
even bone, such as the ribs of large animals. These they generally
backed with sinew.
Sometimes they cut spiral strips from the curving horns of a mountain
sheep, and steamed them straight. Then they glued these strips together
into a wonderfully tough and springy bow. Once in a while they even took
the whole horns of some young sheep, that had not curved too much, and
used the pair just as they grew. In this case each horn made one-half of
the bow, and the piece of skull between was shaped down into a handle.
This gave the shape of a “Cupid’s Bow,” but it could shoot to kill.
[Illustration: THE “LONG BOW” IN SHERWOOD FOREST
One of Robin Hood’s famous band encounters a savage tusker at close
range.]
As to Arrows.
The arrows were quite as important, and their making became a great
industry with every race. This was because so many must be carried for
each hunt or battle.
Who is not familiar with the chipped flint arrow-heads that the farmer
so often turns up with his plow as a relic of the period when Americans
were red-skinned instead of white? These arrow-heads have generally a
shoulder where the arrow was set into the shaft, there to be bound
tightly with sinew or fiber. Many of them are also barbed to hold the
flesh.
A Shooting Machine.
But the age of machinery was coming on. Once in a while there were
glimpses of more powerful and complicated devices to be seen among these
simple arms.
A new weapon now came about through warfare. Man has been a savage
fighting animal through pretty much all his history, but while he tried
to kill the other fellow, he objected to being killed himself.
Therefore he took to wearing armor. During the Middle Ages he piled on
more and more, until at last one of the knights could hardly walk, and
it took a strong horse to carry him. When such a one fell, he went over
with a crash like a tin-peddler’s wagon, and had to be picked up again
by some of his men. Such armor would turn most of the arrows. Hence
invention got at work again and produced the cross-bow and its bolt. We
have already learned how the tough skin of animals brought about the
bow; now we see that man’s artificial iron skin caused the invention of
the cross-bow.
What It Was.
What was the cross-bow? It was the first real hand-shooting machine. It
was another big step toward the day of the rifle. The idea was simple
enough. Wooden bows had already been made as strong as the strongest man
could pull, and they wished for still stronger ones--steel ones. How
could they pull them? At first they mounted them upon a wooden frame and
rested one end on the shoulder for a brace. Then they took to pressing
the other end against the ground, and using both hands. Next, it was a
bright idea to put a stirrup on this end, in order to hold it with the
foot.
Still they were not satisfied. “Stronger, stronger!” they clamored;
“give us bows which will kill the enemy farther away than he can shoot
at us! If we cannot set such bows with both arms let us try our backs!”
So they fastened “belt-claws” to their stout girdles and tugged the bow
strings into place with their back and leg muscles.
“Stronger, stronger again, for now the enemy has learned to use
belt-claws and he can shoot as far as we. Let us try mechanics!”
So they attached levers, pulleys, ratchets and windlasses, until at last
they reached the size of the great siege cross-bows, weighing eighteen
pounds. These sometimes needed a force of twelve hundred pounds to draw
back the string to its catch, but how they could shoot!
And Now for Chemistry.
Human muscle seemed to have reached its limit, mechanics seemed to have
reached its limit, but still the world clamored, “Stronger, stronger!
How shall we kill our enemy farther away than he can kill us?” For
answer, man unlocked one of the secrets of Nature and took out a
terrible force. It was a force of chemistry.
[Illustration: DEER-STALKING WITH THE CROSS-BOW
This compact arm with its small bolt and great power was popular with
many sportsmen.]
Who first discovered the power of gunpowder? Probably the Chinese,
although all authorities do not agree. Strange, is it not, that a race
still using cross-bows in its army should have known of explosives long
before the Christian Era, and perhaps as far back as the time of Moses?
Here is a passage from their ancient Gentoo Code of Laws: “The
magistrate shall not make war with any deceitful machine, or with
poisoned weapons, or with cannons or guns, or any kind of firearms.” But
China might as well have been Mars before the age of travel. Our
civilization had to work out the problem for itself.
Playing with Fire.
It all began through playing with fire. It was desired to throw fire on
an enemy’s buildings or his ships, and so destroy them. Burning torches
were thrown by machines, made of cords and springs, over a city wall,
and it became a great study to find the best burning compound with which
to cover these torches. One was needed which would blaze with a great
flame and was hard to put out.
Hence the early chemists made all possible mixtures of pitch, resin,
naphtha, sulphur, saltpeter, etc.; “Greek fire” was one of the most
famous.
What Two Monks Discovered.
Many of these were made in the monasteries. The monks were pretty much
the only people in those days with time for study, and two of these
shaven-headed scientists now had a chance to enter history. Roger Bacon
was the first. One night he was working his diabolical mixture in the
stone-walled laboratory, and watched, by the flickering lights, the
progress of a certain interesting combination for which he had used pure
instead of impure saltpeter.
Suddenly there was an explosion, shattering the chemical apparatus and
probably alarming the whole building. “Good gracious!” we can imagine
some of the startled brothers saying, “whatever is he up to now! Does he
want to kill us all?” That explosion proved the new combination was not
fitted for use as a thrown fire; it also showed the existence of
terrible forces far beyond the power of all bow-springs, even those made
of steel.
Roger Bacon thus discovered what was practically gunpowder, as far back
as the thirteenth century, and left writings in which he recorded mixing
11.2 parts of the saltpeter, 29.4 of charcoal, and 29 of sulphur. This
was the formula developed as the result of his investigations.
Berthold Schwartz, a monk of Freiburg, studied Bacon’s works and carried
on dangerous experiments of his own, so that he is ranked with Bacon for
the honor. He was also the first one to rouse the interest of Europe in
the great discovery.
And then began the first crude, clumsy efforts at gunmaking. Firearms
were born.
The Coming of the Matchlock.
Hand bombards and culverins were among the early types. Some of these
were so heavy that a forked support had to be driven into the ground,
and two men were needed, one to hold and aim, the other to prime and
fire. How does that strike you for a duck-shooting proposition? Of
course such a clumsy arrangement could only be used in war.
Improvements kept coming, however. Guns were lightened and bettered in
shape. Somebody thought of putting a flash pan for the powder, by the
side of the touch-hole, and now it was decided to fasten the slow-match,
in a movable cock, upon the barrel and ignite it with a trigger. These
matches were fuses of some slow-burning fiber, like tow, which would
keep a spark for a considerable time. Formerly they had to be carried
separately, but the new arrangement was a great convenience and made the
matchlock. The cock, being curved like a snake, was called the
“serpentine.”
[Illustration: AN UNEXPECTED MEETING
The “Kentucky Rifle” with its flint-lock was accurate, but had to be
muzzle-charged.]
The Gun of Our Ancestors.
Everybody knows what the flint-lock was like. You simply fastened a
flake of flint in the cock and snapped it against a steel plate. This
struck off sparks which fell into the flash-pan and fired the charge.
It was so practical that it became the form of gun for all uses; thus
gunmaking began to be a big industry. Invented early in the seventeenth
century, it was used by the hunters and soldiers of the next two hundred
years. Old people remember when flint-locks were plentiful everywhere.
In fact, they are still being manufactured and are sold in some parts of
Africa and the Orient. One factory in Birmingham, England, is said to
produce about twelve hundred weekly, and Belgium shares in their
manufacture. Some of the Arabs use them to this day in the form of
strange-looking guns with long, slender muzzles and very light, curved
stocks.
Caps and Breech-Loaders.
Primers were tried in different forms called “detonators,” but the
familiar little copper cap was the most popular. No need to describe
them. Millions are still made to be used on old-fashioned nipple guns,
even in this day of fixed ammunition.
[Illustration: THE FIRST REMINGTON RIFLE]
Then came another great development, the breech-loader.
From Henry VIII to Cartridges.
Breech-loaders were hardly new. King Henry VIII of England, he of the
many wives, had a match-lock arquebus of this type dated 1537. Henry IV
of France even invented one for his army, and others worked a little on
the idea from time to time. But it was not until fixed ammunition came
into use that the breech-loader really came to stay--and that was only
the other day. You remember that the Civil War began with muzzle-loaders
and ended with breech-loaders.
Houiller, the French gunsmith, hit on the great idea of the cartridge.
If you were going to use powder, ball and percussion primer, to get your
game, why not put them all into a neat, handy, gas-tight case? Simple
enough, when you come to think of it, like most great ideas. But it
required good brain-stuff to do that thinking.
A Refusal and What Came of It.
Two men, a smith and his son, both named Eliphalet Remington, in 1816,
were working busily one day at their forge in beautiful Ilion Gorge,
when, so tradition says, the son asked his father for money to buy a
rifle, and met with a refusal.
The boy set his wits to work. Looking around the forge, he picked up
enough scrap iron to make a gun barrel, and with this set to work to
make a rifle for himself. At that time gun barrels were made, not by
drilling the bore out of a solid rod of metal, but by shaping a thick,
oblong sheet of metal around a rod the size of the bore, and lapwelding
the edges. When the rod was withdrawn, there was your barrel.
It took him several weeks to work out this job and get it right, but he
succeeded. He had no tools to cut the rifling. There was a gunsmith in
Utica, and he walked there, fifteen miles over the hills, to have his
barrel finished. The gunsmith was so impressed by the boy and his
accomplishment that, after rifling the barrel, he fitted it with a lock.
Then when Remington fitted on a wooden stock his weapon was ready.
This was the first Remington rifle, and it proved a surprisingly good
one.
Neighbors tried it, and wanted guns like it. Remington made them. The
first rifle--or one exactly like the first one, at least--that Remington
made is still in Ilion, the property of Walter Green. Before long the
demand was so brisk that Remington would take as many barrels as he
could carry over to the Utica gunsmith to be rifled, bringing back a
load that had been left there on a previous trip, a journey of thirty
miles on foot.
When a new business grows at that rate, of course, it soon needs power.
So, later, in 1816, the two Remingtons went “up the creek,” building a
shop three miles from home, at Ilion Gulph, which was part of the
father’s farm. That was the actual beginning of the plant and the
industry of which the centennial was celebrated in 1916. During its
early years this shop made anything in its line that could be sold in
the neighborhood--rifles, shotguns, crowbars, pickaxes, farm tools. The
power was taken from a water wheel in Steele’s Creek, and the first
grindstones for smoothing down the welded edges in gun barrels were cut
from a red sandstone ledge up the gorge.
Guns sold better than all other products. Orders came from greater
distances. By and by shipments were made on the new Erie Canal. For a
while, as packages were small, they were taken to the canal bridge, a
board lifted from the floor, and the package dropped onto a boat as it
passed under. There was no bill of lading. Remington took down the name
of the boat and notified his customer by mail, so the latter would know
which craft was bringing his guns.
[Illustration: YOUNG REMINGTON AT WORK ON RIFLE]
When the trade had extended into all the surrounding counties,
however, the new business needed another prime essential of
industry--transportation facilities. Shipments were growing larger, and
materials like grindstones, bought outside, had to be brought from the
canal to Ilion Gulph. In 1828, therefore, the elder Remington bought a
large farm in Ilion proper, and there, on the canal, the present plant
was started. This was also the beginning of Ilion, for at that period
the place was nothing more than a country corner. In 1828 the elder
Remington met his death through accident and the business was carried on
by his son, who brought water for several power wheels from Steele’s
Creek, built a house to live in, and installed in his wooden shop quite
a collection of machinery for gunmaking--the list names a big tilt
hammer, several trip hammers, boring and rifling machines, grindstones,
and so on.
The Beginning of Precision in Mechanics.
Not so many years before that, in England, James Watt was complaining
about the difficulty of boring a six-inch cylinder for his steam engine
with sufficient accuracy to make it a commercial success. No matter how
he packed the piston with cork, oiled rags and old hats, the
irregularities in the cylinder let the steam escape, and it was believed
that neither the tools nor the workmen existed for making a steam engine
with sufficient precision. When a young manufacturer named Wilkinson
invented a guide for the boring tool, and machined cylinders of fifty
inches diameter so accurately that, as Watt testified, they did not err
the thickness of an old shilling in any part, it seemed as though the
last refinement in machinery had been achieved. That was not very
accurate by present-day standards of the thousandth part of an inch, for
a shilling is about one-sixteenth of an inch in thickness.
[Illustration: OLD BORING TOOL]
Remington was right in the thick of development with a gunmaking plant,
of course, for as his business grew he had to invent and adapt machines
to increase output. The lap-welded barrel was standard until 1850, and
he got together a battery of trip hammers for forging and welding his
barrels. Finer dimensions became a factor in his business when the
output grew large enough to warrant carrying a stock of spare parts for
his customers, and so he improved those parts in ways that gave at least
the beginnings of interchangeability.
Materials were very crude. There was no buying of foundry iron by
analysis, no high carbon steels, no fancy tool steels--nor any
“efficiency experts” with their stop watches and scientific
speed-and-feed tables. Iron was secured by sending teams around the
neighborhood to pick up scrap, and when the scrap iron was all cleaned
up, fresh metal was brought from ore beds in Oneida County. Coal was
scarce, and charcoal made the chief fuel, burnt in the hills round about
Ilion.
And the world was fairly swarming with inventors!
That was long before invention became a research department full of
engineers. The individual inventor, with a queer-shaped factory process,
carried on by a head and a rough model in his carpet-bag, had a chance
to influence industry. Few of the useful contrivances had been invented
yet, and almost any one of these chaps might be a genius. So, from the
very first, Remington was interested in inventors. He was an inventor
himself! His pioneer spirit was so strong that Ilion became a place of
pilgrimage for men with ideas. Inventors came from everywhere, and
Remington listened to them all. Some brought models, others drawings,
still others a bare idea, and a few, of course, had just a plain “bug.”
[Illustration: POLE LATHE OF 1800]
The First Government Contract.
The first government contract came in 1845. War with Mexico loomed up on
the horizon. William Jencks had invented a carbine, and Uncle Sam wanted
several thousand guns made in a hurry under the patent. A contract had
been let to Ames & Co., of Springfield, Mass., and they had made special
machinery for the job. Remington took over the contract and the
machinery, added to his power, secured by putting in another water race,
erected the building now known as the “Old Armory,” and made the
carbines.
In 1850 the art of gunmaking began to improve radically. The old
lap-welded barrel gave way to the barrel drilled from solid steel. This
was accomplished for the first time in America at the Remington plant,
in making Harper’s Ferry muskets. Then followed the drilling of
small-bore barrels from solid steel, the drilling of doubled-barrel
shotguns from one piece of steel, the drilling of fluid steel and nickel
steel barrels, all done for the first time in this country at the Ilion
shops. Three-barrel guns were also made from one piece of steel, two
bores for shot and the third rifled for a bullet. A customer wanted some
special barrels with nine bores in a single piece of steel. These were
made at Ilion, and the Remington plant soon became noted for its ability
to bore almost anything in the shape of a gun, from the tiniest squirrel
calibers up to boat guns weighing sixty pounds or more, which were
really small caliber cannon.
[Illustration: SHIPPING REMINGTONS IN THE EARLY DAYS]
Between the time when Remington made his first rifle at Ilion Gulph and
the outbreak of the Civil War, most of the basic things in machine tools
had been adapted to general production--the slide-rest lathe, planer,
shaper, drill press, steam hammer, taps and dies, the vernier caliper
that enabled a mechanic at the bench to measure to one-thousandth of an
inch, and so on.
When Fort Sumter was fired upon, Uncle Sam turned to the Remington
plant, among others, for help out of his dilemma of “unpreparedness.”
The first contract was given for 5,000 Harper’s Ferry rifles, and it
took two years to complete it. Five thousand Harper’s Ferry muskets came
in to be changed so that bayonet or sabre could be attached, and this
particular job was finished in two weeks, every man and boy in Ilion
working at it. There was a big contract for army revolvers, and that had
to be taken care of by starting a separate plant in Utica, which ran
until the end of the war, when its machinery and tools were moved to
Ilion. Steam power was now installed, and the plant, increased by new
buildings and machinery, ran day and night.
[Illustration: MASTER OF THE SITUATION
The modern sportsman with his automatic rifle is prepared for all
emergencies.]
In 1863, the Remington breech-loading rifle was perfected, and proved to
be so great an improvement over previous inventions in military arms
that an order for 10,000 of them was obtained from our government. The
Ilion plant being taxed to its utmost capacity, the contract was
transferred to the Savage Arms Company, of Middletown, Conn., which
completed the job in 1864.
[Illustration: _Illustrations by courtesy of the Winchester Repeating
Arms Co._