1.
Karl Edward Wagner
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Karl Edward Wagner was an American writer, poet, editor and publisher of horror, science fiction, and heroic fantasy, who was born in Knoxville, Tennessee and originally trained as a psychiatrist. He wrote numerous dark fantasy and horror stories and his Carcosa publishing company issued four volumes of the best stories by some of the major authors of the so-called Golden Age pulp magazines. He is possibly best known for his creation of a series of stories featuring the character Kane and his disillusionment with the medical profession can be detected in the stories The Fourth Seal and Into Whose Hands. He described his philosophy as nihilistic, anarchistic and absurdist. Wagner also admired the cinema of Sam Peckinpah, stating I worship the film The Wild Bunch, Wagner was the fourth and youngest child of Aubrey J. Wagner and Dorothea Huber. His father was an official of the Tennessee Valley Authority, Wagner earned a history degree from Kenyon College during 1967, and a psychiatry degree from University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. As noted above, he disliked the medical profession, which he abandoned upon establishing himself as a writer, Wagner was productive as both a writer and editor/anthologist, see below. His friends included the writer Manly Wade Wellman, two of whose collections he published with the Carcosa publishing imprint, Wagner died in his home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, on October 14,1994, essentially of the consequences of longterm alcoholism. It was reported in a late 1994 issue of the Newsletter of the Horror Writers of America that Wagners causes of death were heart failure, Exorcisms and Ecstasies, a posthumous volume of uncollected stories, miscellany and tributes was published by small press publisher Fedogan & Bremer during 1997. Night Shade Books has published the complete Kane stories in two hardcover volumes and his three volumes of Echoes of Valor also featured restored versions of pulp-era fantasy stories by authors such as Fritz Leiber, C. L. Moore, Henry Kuttner, and Nictzin Dyalhis. Wagner wrote an unpublished Bran Mak Morn novel, Queen of the Night, Wagner created his own mystical and immortal pre-historical anti-hero, Kane, whose name and background are based on traditional conceptions of the biblical Cain. Kane is an immortal somewhat like the Wandering Jew Kanes character also includes elements of Robert E. Howards Solomon Kane and he is an immortal, cursed to wander the earth until he is destroyed by the violence that he himself has created. He sells his loyalty as a fighter to the highest bidder and he is a well-read and intelligent man who has traveled his world for centuries and is able to discuss music, poetry, politics, and many other subjects. He is also amoral and a born killer, the Kane stories are often classified as tales of sword and sorcery, which some critics have compared favourably to those of Howard and Michael Moorcock. Howards mighty-thewed barbarian Conan the Cimmerian, Wagner set about creating his own fantasy character while still attending medical school, the result was initially published as a paperback original during 1970 by West Coast pornography publisher Powell Publications, with a lurid cover. The text of the novel was altered by an unknown copyeditor to conform with the cover art, after publishing a pseudonymous pornographic novel with a small New York company, Wagner relinquished his chance to become a doctor and instead decided to write full-time. During 1973, Warner Paperback library published Death Angels Shadow, which collected the three original Kane novellas and he also began selling his stories and poems regularly to the growing small press magazine market. Several of his tales were published in Gary Hoppenstands Midnight Sunn, a magazine devoted to Kane
2.
.223 Remington
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The.223 Remington is a rifle cartridge. The name is pronounced either two-twenty-three or two-two-three Remington. It is commercially loaded with 0.224 inch diameter jacketed bullets, with weights ranging from 40 to 85 grains, a 90 gr Sierra Matchking bullet is available for reloaders. The.223 Rem was first offered to the sporting market in December 1963 in the Remington 760 rifle. In 1964 the.223 Rem cartridge was adopted for use in the Colt M16 rifle which became a standard rifle of the U. S. Army. The military version of the uses a 55 gr full metal jacket boattail design and was designated M193. In 1980 NATO modified the.223 Remington into a new design which is designated 5. 56×45mm NATO type SS109, the cartridge and rifle were developed as one unit by Fairchild Industries, Remington Arms, and several engineers working toward a goal developed by U. S. Early development work begins in 1957, a project to create a Small Caliber High Velocity firearm is created. Eugene Stoner of Armalite is invited to scale down the AR-10 design, Winchester is also invited to participate. It was then known as the.224 Springfield, concurrently with the SCHV project Springfield armory is developing a 7.62 mm rifle. Harvey is ordered to cease all work on the SCHV to avoid any competition of resources, eugene Stoner of Armalite had been advised to produce a scaled down version of the 7.62 mm AR-10 design. In May 1957 Stoner gives a live demonstration of the prototype of the AR-15 for General Wyman. As a result, CONARC orders rifles to test, Stoner and Sierra Bullets Frank Snow begin work on the.222 Remington cartridge. Using a ballistic calculator they determine that a 55 grain bullet would have to be fired at 3, robert Hutton starts development of a powder load to reach the 3,300 fps goal. He uses DuPont IMR4198, IMR3031 and an Olin Powder to work up loads, testing is done with a Remington 722 rifle with a 22 Apex Barrel. During a public demonstration the round penetrates the US steel helmet as required. But testing shows chamber pressures to be excessively high, Stoner contacts both Winchester and Remington about increasing the case capacity. Remington creates a larger cartridge which is called the.222 Special which is loaded with DuPont IMR4475 powder,1958, During parallel testing of the T44E4 and the AR-15 the T44E4 experiences 16 failures per 1,000 rounds fired compared to 6.1 for the AR-15
3.
.308 Winchester
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The.308 Winchester is a rimless, bottlenecked rifle cartridge and is the commercial cartridge from which the 7. 62×51mm NATO round was derived. The.308 Winchester was introduced in 1952, two prior to the NATO adoption of the 7. 62×51mm NATO T65. Winchester branded the cartridge and introduced it to the hunting market as the.308 Winchester. Winchesters Model 70 and Model 88 rifles were chambered for the new cartridge. Since then, the.308 Winchester has become the most popular short-action and it is also commonly used for civilian hunting, target shooting, Metallic Silhouette, bench rest target shooting, palma, metal matches and military sniping, and police sharpshooting. The relatively short case makes the.308 Winchester especially well-adapted for short-action rifles, when loaded with a bullet that expands, tumbles, or fragments in tissue, this cartridge is capable of high terminal performance. Their interchange is, however, considered safe by the Sporting Arms, the.308 Winchester has 3.64 ml cartridge case capacity. The exterior shape of the case was designed to promote reliable case feeding and extraction in bolt action rifles and machine guns alike, all dimensions in millimeters and inches. Americans would define the angle at alpha/2 =20 degrees. The common rifling twist rate for this cartridge is 305 mm,4 grooves, Ø lands =7.62 mm, Ø grooves =7.82 mm, land width =4.47 mm and the primer type is large rifle. Rulings the.308 Winchester can handle up to 415.00 MPa Pmax piezo pressure, regulated countries every rifle cartridge combo has to be proofed at 125% of this maximum C. I. P. pressure to certify for sale to consumers. This means that.308 Winchester chambered arms in C. I. P, regulated countries are currently proof tested at 519.00 MPa PE piezo pressure. North American SAAMI maximum pressure for the 308 Winchester is 62,000 PSI, the.308 Winchester is one of the most popular hunting cartridges in the United States, and possibly the world. It has gained popularity in countries as an exceptional cartridge for game in the medium- to large-sized class. In North America it is used extensively on whitetail deer, pronghorn, clay Harvey, an American gun writer, says it is usable on moose and elk. Layne Simpson, an American who has hunted in Sweden, says he is surprised how many hunters there use the cartridge, craig Boddington was told by a Norma Precision executive that the.308 is one of Normas best-selling calibers. In Africa the.308 Win is one of the most popular calibers among Bushveld hunters and is used on anything from duiker right up to the massive eland. The.308 Winchester has slightly more drop at range than the. 30-06 Springfield
4.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
5.
Winchester Repeating Arms Company
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The Winchester Repeating Arms Company was a prominent American maker of repeating firearms, located in New Haven, Connecticut. The ancestor of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company was the Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson partnership of Norwich, Jennings rifle was a commercial failure, and Robbins & Lawrence ceased production in 1852. Smith designed a much-improved rifle based on Jennings, and the partners also hired away Robbins & Lawrence shop foreman Benjamin Tyler Henry. In 1855 the Smith & Wesson partnership, in order to manufacture what they called the Volcanic lever-action rifle and pistol, sought investors and its largest stockholder was clothing manufacturer Oliver Winchester. The Volcanic rifle had only limited success, the company moved to New Haven in 1856, but by the end of that year became insolvent. Oliver Winchester and his partner John M. Davies purchased the firms assets from the remaining stockholders. After Smiths departure Benjamin Henry continued to work with a Smith development project, the self-contained metallic rimfire cartridge, Henry also supervised a new rifle design based loosely on the Volcanic to use the new ammunition, retaining only the general form of the breech mechanism and the tubular magazine. This became the Henry rifle of 1860, which was manufactured by the New Haven Arms Company, the Henry rifle ensured New Haven Arms success, and together with the Spencer rifle established the lever-action repeater in the firearms market. In 1866 Benjamin Henry, angered over what he believed was inadequate compensation, Oliver Winchester, hastening back from Europe, forestalled the move and reorganized New Haven Arms yet again as the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Another extremely popular model was rolled out in 1873, the Model 1873 introduced the first Winchester center fire cartridge, the. 44-40 WCF. These rifle families are known as the Gun That Won the West. The Model 1873 was followed by the Model 1876, a version of the 73. It was chambered for longer, more powerful cartridges such as. 45-60 WCF. 45-75 WCF, Oliver Winchester died in December 1880, his son and successor, William Wirt Winchester, died of tuberculosis four months later. William Wirt Winchesters widow, Sarah Winchester, used her inheritance, several of these are still in production today through companies such as Browning, Rossi, Navy Arms and others which have revived several of the discontinued models or produced reproductions. The early years of the century found the Winchester Repeating Arms Company competing with new John Browning designs. The race to produce the first commercial self-loading rifle brought forth the.22 rimfire Winchester Model 1903 and later centerfire Model 1905, Model 1907, and Model 1910 rifles. Winchester engineers, after ten years of work, designed the Model 1911 to circumvent Brownings self-loading shotgun patents, one of Winchesters premier engineers, T. C. Johnson, was instrumental in the development of these self-loading firearms and went on to superintend the designs of Winchesters classic Model 1912, Model 52 and Model 54
6.
Cartridge (firearms)
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Military and commercial producers continue to pursue the goal of caseless ammunition. A cartridge without a bullet is called a blank, One that is completely inert is called a dummy. Some artillery ammunition uses the same concept as found in small arms. In other cases, the shell is separate from the propellant charge. In popular use, the bullet is often misused to refer to a complete cartridge. The cartridge case seals a firing chamber in all directions excepting the bore, a firing pin strikes the primer and ignites it. The primer compound deflagrates, it does not detonate, a jet of burning gas from the primer ignites the propellant. Gases from the burning powder pressurize and expand the case to seal it against the chamber wall and these propellant gases push on the bullet base. In response to pressure, the bullet will move in the path of least resistance which is down the bore of the barrel. After the bullet leaves the barrel, the pressure drops to atmospheric pressure. The case, which had been expanded by chamber pressure. This eases removal of the case from the chamber, brass is a commonly used case material because it is resistant to corrosion. A brass case head can be work-hardened to withstand the pressures of cartridges. The neck and body portion of a case is easily annealed to make the case ductile enough to allow reforming so that it can be reloaded many times. Steel is used in some plinking ammunition, as well as in military ammunition. Steel is less expensive than brass, but it is not feasible to reload, Military forces typically consider small arms cartridge cases to be disposable, one-time-use devices. However, case weight affects how much ammunition a soldier can carry, conversely, steel is more susceptible to contamination and damage so all such cases are varnished or otherwise sealed against the elements. One downside caused by the strength of steel in the neck of these cases is that propellant gas can blow back past the neck
7.
6mm Lee Navy
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The 6mm Lee Navy, also known as the 6mm U. S. N. Or.236 Navy, is an obsolete American rifle cartridge, the 6mm Lee Navy was in turn replaced by the.30 Army cartridge in 1899. By 1894, the U. S. Navy desired to adopt a modern small-bore, smokeless powder service cartridge, Naval authorities decided that the new cartridge should be adaptable to both rifles and machine guns. Noting that the military forces were adopting smaller and smaller caliber rifles with higher velocity cartridges. The government notice of bid requirements said no other calibers or cartridges would be considered, Winchester made the ammunition for the government, which in turn provided each competitor with 6 mm U. S. N. Cartridges and 0. 236-inch caliber rifle barrels, the latter supplied unchambered, the rifle action was required to withstand the firing of five overpressure cartridges with a chamber pressure of 60,000 psi. Several inventors and rifle manufacturers submitted models for testing, among them James Paris Lee, the Lee straight-pull won in repeated trials and the U. S. Navy adopted the round in 1895 as the Lee Rifle, Model of 1895, caliber 6-mm. As adopted by the Navy after tests at the Naval Torpedo Station, Cartridge featured a long, bottle-necked semi-rimmed brass case and a 135-grain round-nosed, cupro-nickel coated, steel-jacketed, lead-core bullet. The initial version utilized a 135-grain steel-jacketed lead core bullet with 2. 35-in, long case and 0. 517-inch rim, with a bullet diameter of 0.244 inches. The rifle powder for the new cartridge was Rifleite, a flake nitrocellulose smokeless powder originally developed for use in the British.303 cartridge, the new 6 mm cartridge achieved a muzzle velocity of 2,550 fps and was initially manufactured by Winchester for the Navy. After the adoption of the M1895 Lee, the rim of the government cartridge was redesigned with a slight bevel for optimum performance in the en bloc charger-loaded magazine of the M1895 rifle. The revised cartridge was designated the 6 mm U. S. N, but continued to be referred to in naval stores reports as the Ball Cartridge,6 mm. In March 1897, after reports of excessive chamber pressures and short barrel life despite the use of 4. The new M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun was modified to accept the new 112-grain loading the same year. Firing a 112-grain bullet at 2,560 ft/s from a 28 in barrel, the 112-grain roundnosed bullet had a flatter trajectory than its 135-grain predecessor at all ranges up to 500 yards, above this distance, the heavier bullet began to show an advantage. The new loading had a range of around 600-700 yards, at which point the blunt-tip bullet rapidly lost velocity. The 112-grain bullet, like its predecessor, demonstrated an inclination to instability unless rapidly rotated, the M1895 Lee rifle therefore received a rapid barrel rifling twist of one turn in 7.5 inches to keep the bullet from wobbling or tumbling at extended ranges. At some point, this rifling was changed in later production rifles to one turn in 10 inches RH
8.
Bullet
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The word bullet is a firearm term. A bullet is a projectile expelled from the barrel of a firearm, the term is from Middle French and originated as the diminutive of the word boulle which means small ball. Bullets are made of a variety of materials and they are available singly as they would be used in muzzle loading and cap and ball firearms, as part of a paper cartridge, and much more commonly as a component of metallic cartridges. Bullets are made in a numbers of styles and constructions depending on how they will be used. Many bullets have specialized functions, such as hunting, target shooting, training, defense, a bullet is not a cartridge. In paper and metallic cartridges a bullet is one component of the cartridge, bullet sizes are expressed by their weight and diameter in both English and Metric measurement systems. For example.22 caliber 55 grain bullets or 5. 56mm 55 grain bullets are the same caliber, the word bullet is often used colloquially to refer to a cartridge, which is a combination of the bullet, paper or metallic case/shell, powder, and primer. This use of bullet, when cartridge is intended, leads to confusion when the components of a cartridge are discussed or intended, the bullets used in many cartridges are fired at a muzzle velocity faster than the speed of sound. Meaning they are supersonic and thus can travel a substantial distance, bullet speed through air depends on a number of factors such as barometric pressure, humidity, air temperature, and wind speed. Subsonic cartridges fire bullets slower than the speed of sound and so there is no sonic crack and this means that a subsonic cartridge such as.45 ACP can be effectively suppressed to be substantially quieter than a supersonic cartridge such as the.223 Remington. Bullets do not normally contain explosives, but damage the target by impact. The first use of gunpowder in Europe was recorded in 1247 and it had been used in China for hundreds of years. Later in 1364 hand cannon appeared, early projectiles were made of stone. Stone was used in cannon and hand cannon, in cannon it was eventually found that stone would not penetrate stone fortifications which gave rise to the use of heavier metals for the round projectiles. Hand cannon projectiles developed in a similar following the failure of stone from siege cannon. The first recorded instance of a ball from a hand cannon penetrating armor occurred in 1425. In this photograph of shot retrieved from the wreck of the Mary Rose which was sunk in 1545, the round shot are clearly of different sizes and some are stone while others are cast iron. The development of the hand culverin and matchlock arquebus brought about the use of cast lead balls as projectiles, bullet is derived from the French word boulette, which roughly means little ball
9.
Grain (unit)
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A grain is a unit of measurement of mass, and, for the troy grain, equal to exactly 7001647989100000000♠64.79891 milligrams. It is nominally based upon the mass of a seed of a cereal. From the Bronze Age into the Renaissance the average masses of wheat, rather, expressions such as thirty-two grains of wheat, taken from the middle of the ear appear to have been ritualistic formulas, essentially the premodern equivalent of legal boilerplate. Another book states that Captain Henry Kater, of the British Standards Commission, the grain was the legal foundation of traditional English weight systems, and is the only unit that is equal throughout the troy, avoirdupois, and apothecaries systems of mass. The unit was based on the weight of a grain of barley. The fundamental unit of the pre-1527 English weight system known as Tower weights, was a different sort of known as the wheat grain. The Tower wheat grain was defined as exactly 45⁄64 of a troy grain.79891 milligrams, 7000100000000000000♠1 gram is approximately 7001154323600000000♠15.43236 grains. The unit formerly used by jewellers to measure pearls, diamonds, or other stones, called the jewellers grain or pearl grain, is equal to 1⁄4 of a carat. The grain was also the name of a traditional French unit equal to 6995531150000000000♠53.115 mg. In both British Imperial and U. S. customary units, there are precisely 7,000 grains per avoirdupois pound, the grain is commonly used to measure the mass of bullets and propellants. The term also refers to a particle of gunpowder, the size of which varies according to requirements. In archery, the grain is the unit used to weigh arrows. In dentistry, gold foil, used as a material to restore teeth, is measured in grains, in North America, the hardness of water is often measured in grains per US gallon of calcium carbonate equivalents. Otherwise, water hardness is measured in the metric unit parts per million, one grain per US gallon is approximately 6995171000000000000♠17.1 ppm. Soft water contains 1–4 gpg of calcium carbonate equivalents, while hard water contains 11–20 gpg, though no longer recommended, grains are still used occasionally in medicine as part of the apothecaries system, especially in prescriptions for older medicines such as aspirin or phenobarbital. For example, the dosage of a standard 6996325000000000000♠325 mg tablet of aspirin is sometimes given as 7000500000000000000♠5 grains, in that example the grain is approximated to 6995650000000000000♠65 mg, though the grain can also be approximated to 6995600000000000000♠60 mg, depending on the medication and manufacturer. The apothecaries system has its own system of notation, in which the symbol or abbreviation is followed by the quantity in lower case Roman numerals. For amounts less than one, the quantity is written as a fraction, or for one half, therefore, a prescription for tablets containing 325 mg of aspirin and 30 mg of codeine can be written ASA gr
10.
Rifling
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In firearms, rifling consists of helical grooves in the internal surface of a guns barrel, which impart a spin to a projectile around its long axis. This spin serves to stabilize the projectile, improving its aerodynamic stability. Rifling is often described by its twist rate, which indicates the distance the rifling takes to complete one revolution, such as 1 turn in 10 inches. A shorter distance indicates a faster twist, meaning that for a given velocity the projectile will be rotating at a spin rate. Barrels intended for long, small-diameter bullets, such as the ultra-low-drag, 80-grain 0.223 inch bullets, extremely long projectiles such as flechettes may require high twist rates, these projectiles must be inherently stable, and are often fired from a smoothbore barrel. Muskets were smoothbore, large caliber weapons using ball-shaped ammunition fired at low velocity. Due to the high cost and great difficulty of manufacturing, and the need to load readily from the muzzle. Consequently, on firing the ball bounced off the sides of the barrel when fired, barrel rifling was invented in Augsburg, Germany in 1498. In 1520 August Kotter, an armourer of Nuremberg, Germany improved upon this work, though true rifling dates from the mid-16th century, it did not become commonplace until the nineteenth century. The most successful weapons using rifling with black powder were breech loaders such as the Queen Anne pistol, the grooves most commonly used in modern rifling have fairly sharp edges. More recently, polygonal rifling, a throwback to the earliest types of rifling, has become popular, polygonal barrels tend to have longer service lives because the reduction of the sharp edges of the land reduces erosion of the barrel. Supporters of polygonal rifling also claim higher velocities and greater accuracy, polygonal rifling is currently seen on pistols from CZ, Heckler & Koch, Glock, Tanfoglio, and Kahr Arms, as well as the Desert Eagle. Such guns have achieved significant increases in velocity and range. Examples include the South African G5 and the German PzH2000, gain-twist rifling begins with very little change in the projectiles angular momentum during the first few inches of bullet travel after ignition during the transition from chamber to throat. This enables the bullet to remain undisturbed and trued to the case mouth. After engaging the rifling the bullet is progressively subjected to accelerated angular momentum as burning powder propels it down the barrel. By only gradually increasing the rate, torque is spread along a much longer section of barrel. Gain-twist rifling was used as early as the American Civil War, colt Army and Navy revolvers both employed gain-twist rifling
