Electric gunIn 1908, a new powderless electric gun was reported in Le Journal, France. It wasdescribed as the invention of M. Alfred Pouteaux, a young engineer from Dijon. Details were “secret,” but Pouteaux said he utilized polyphase currents of high frequency. A rapid stream of projectiles could be shot out of a tube about 4½-ft long x 2½-in diam. without explosives. Presumably, it used a series of short electrical coils around the tube, each causing induced magnetism in the bullet, which by resulting sequential repulsion was accelerated until forcefully ejected from the gun barrel. However, that idea had originated years earlier, with earlier newspaper reports, for example, about inventors L.S. Gardner, New Orleans, U.S.A. (1900), and Norwegian K. Birkeland (1902). The modern railgun uses the same principles.« |
