A firm that fared better with an intermediary was that of Edward Savage, founder and co-partner with Henry S. North in the firm of North & Savage. At Middletown, Connecticut for three-quarters of a century, the name of North had been the byword for gunmaking. Formerly S. North, Middletown, the company had been changed to North & Savage during the midfifties. It took on a new shot of capital with the commencement of hostilities. The Savage Revolving Firearms Company of Middletown was organized in and August 12, , Charles R. Sebor was elected president. Secretary and Treasurer for several years was James A. Wheelock. Edward Savage, patentee of the “figure eight” .36 caliber revolver, together with Henry Savage North, seems to have had less and less to do with the managing of the firm. Their work appears ended when they finally brought the revolver to a state of “perfection.”
Ager, Williams, Vandenberg, these have faded into history. The repeating gun most remembered from the war, and yet one which had a very confusing record of use therein, is that of Dr. Richard Jordan Gatling. I had the pleasure of witnessing how effectively Dr. Gatling had builded when I attended a meeting of the American Ordnance Association at Aberdeen the fall of 1957 . Mounted on a testing stand was a small bundle of barrels, dwarfed in seeming firepower by the huge cannon flanking it. But when the gunner pushed the button and that mighty mite whirred into action with a high-pitched snarling roar so rapidly that no individual explosions could even be sensed, I knew I had witnessed not only the world’s fastest-firing machine gun, and the world’s heaviest gun in weight of metal fired (a ton and a half in one minute), but a gun that was directly inspired by the Civil War special artillery General Butler bought from Dr. Gatling. First of Gatling’s guns was bulky wheeled carriage “c...
Comments
Post a Comment