.44 Magnum
The.44 Remington Magnum, or simply.44 Magnum, frequently.44 Mag, is a rimmed, large-bore cartridge designed for revolvers. After its introduction, it was adopted for carbines and rifles. Despite the ".44" designation, guns chambered for the.44 Magnum round, its parent, the.44 Special, use 0.429 in diameter bullets. The.44 Magnum is based on a lengthened.44 Special case, loaded to higher pressures for greater velocity. The.44 Magnum has since been eclipsed in power by the.454 Casull, most by the.460 S&W Magnum and.500 S&W Magnum, among others. When loaded to its maximum and with heavy penetrating bullets, the.44 Magnum cartridge is suitable for short-range hunting of all North American game—though at the cost of heavy recoil and muzzle flash when fired in handguns, less so in carbines and rifles. The.44 Magnum cartridge was the end result of years of tuned handloading of the.44 Special. The.44 Special, other large-bore handgun cartridges, were being loaded with heavy bullets, pushed at higher than normal velocities for better hunting performance.
One of these handloaders was a writer and outdoorsman of the 20th century. Keith settled on the.44 Special cartridge as the basis for his experimentation, rather than the larger.45 Colt. At the time, the selection of.44 caliber projectiles for handloaders was more varied, the.44 Special's brass was thicker and stronger than the dated.45 Colt case. The.44 Special case was smaller in diameter than the.45 Colt case. In revolvers of the same cylinder size, this meant that the.44 caliber revolvers had thicker, thus stronger, cylinder walls than the.45. This allowed higher pressures to be used with less risk of a burst cylinder. Keith encouraged Smith & Wesson and Remington to produce a commercial version of this new high-pressure loading, revolvers chambered for it. Smith & Wesson's first.44 Magnum revolver, the Model 29, was built on December 15, 1955, the gun was announced to the public on January 19, 1956 for a price of USD$140. Julian Hatcher and Keith received two of the first production models.
Hatcher's review of the new Smith & Wesson revolver and the.44 Magnum cartridge appeared in the March, 1956 issue of the magazine. Smith & Wesson produced 3,100 of these revolvers in 1956. By the summer of 1956, Ruger became aware of this project and began work on a single action Blackhawk revolver for the new.44 Magnum cartridge. A popular rumor says a Ruger employee found a cartridge case marked ".44 Remington Magnum" and took it to Bill Ruger, while another says a Remington employee provided Ruger with early samples of the ammunition. Ruger began shipping their new revolver in late November, 1956. The.44 Magnum case is longer than the.44 Special case, not to make more room for propellant, but to prevent the far higher pressure cartridge from being chambered in older, weaker.44 Special firearms, thus preventing injuries and possible deaths. The.44 Magnum was an immediate success, the direct descendants of the S&W Model 29 and the.44 Magnum Ruger Blackhawks are still in production, have been joined by numerous other makes and models of.44 Magnum revolvers and a handful of semi-automatic models, the first being produced in the 1960s.
The film Dirty Harry, prominently featuring the S&W M29, contributed to that model's popularity. Ruger introduced its first long gun, a semi-automatic carbine called the Ruger Model 44 chambered for.44 Magnum, in 1959. Marlin followed soon after with the lever action Model 1894 in.44 Magnum. Having a carbine and a handgun chambered in the same caliber is an old tradition. The.38-40 Winchester and.32-20 Winchester were available in both carbines and revolvers, allowing the shooter to use one type of ammunition for both firearms. Although improved modern alloys and manufacturing techniques have allowed stronger cylinders to be made, leading to larger and more powerful cartridges such as the.454 Casull and.480 Ruger in revolvers the same size as a.44 Magnum, the.44 Magnum is still considered an exceptional weapon. In 2006, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the.44 Magnum, Ruger introduced a special 50th anniversary Blackhawk revolver, in the "Flattop" style. The.44 Magnum delivers a heavy bullet with high velocity for a handgun.
In its full-powered form, it produces so much recoil and muzzle blast that it is considered to be unsuitable for use as a police weapon. Rapid fire is difficult and strenuous on the user's hands for shooters of smaller build or with small hands. Although marketed as a.44 caliber, the.44 Magnum and its parent.44 Special are actually.429-.430 caliber. The.44 designation is a carryover from the early measurements of "heeled" bullets, used in the 19th century. In those times, bullets were measured on the outside of the cartridge, not the inside of the cartridge. After the.44 S&W Russian was developed, the forefather of the.44 Special and thus the.44 Magnum, the measurement of bullet caliber was taken from inside of the cartridge, resulting in.429 caliber. Instead of confusing buyers who were used to.44 caliber revolvers, the original.44 designation was kept for market recognition. Some gun styles are more comfortable to use. Many shooters find the rounded grip shape of the single action better for handling heavy recoil than the grip shape of double-action revolvers, which have a shoulder on top of the grip.
Many shooters consi
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state located in the northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The Appalachian Mountains run through its middle; the Commonwealth is bordered by Delaware to the southeast, Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, Lake Erie and the Canadian province of Ontario to the northwest, New York to the north, New Jersey to the east. Pennsylvania is the 33rd-largest state by area, the 6th-most populous state according to the most recent official U. S. Census count in 2010, it is the 9th-most densely populated of the 50 states. Pennsylvania's two most populous cities are Philadelphia, Pittsburgh; the state capital and its 10th largest city is Harrisburg. Pennsylvania has 140 miles of waterfront along the Delaware Estuary; the state is one of the 13 original founding states of the United States. Part of Pennsylvania, together with the present State of Delaware, had earlier been organized as the Colony of New Sweden.
It was the second state to ratify the United States Constitution, on December 12, 1787. Independence Hall, where the United States Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution were drafted, is located in the state's largest city of Philadelphia. During the American Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg was fought in the south central region of the state. Valley Forge near Philadelphia was General Washington's headquarters during the bitter winter of 1777–78. Pennsylvania is 170 miles north to south and 283 miles east to west. Of a total 46,055 square miles, 44,817 square miles are land, 490 square miles are inland waters, 749 square miles are waters in Lake Erie, it is the 33rd-largest state in the United States. Pennsylvania has 51 miles of coastline along Lake Erie and 57 miles of shoreline along the Delaware Estuary. Of the original Thirteen Colonies, Pennsylvania is the only state that does not border the Atlantic Ocean; the boundaries of the state are the Mason–Dixon line to the south, the Twelve-Mile Circle on the Pennsylvania-Delaware border, the Delaware River to the east, 80° 31' W to the west and the 42° N to the north, with the exception of a short segment on the western end, where a triangle extends north to Lake Erie.
Cities include Philadelphia, Reading and Lancaster in the southeast, Pittsburgh in the southwest, the tri-cities of Allentown and Easton in the central east. The northeast includes the former anthracite coal mining cities of Scranton, Wilkes-Barre and Hazleton. Erie is located in the northwest. State College serves the central region while Williamsport serves the commonwealth's north-central region as does Chambersburg the south-central region, with York and the state capital Harrisburg on the Susquehanna River in the east-central region of the Commonwealth and Altoona and Johnstown in the west-central region; the state has five geographical regions, namely the Allegheny Plateau and Valley, Atlantic Coastal Plain and the Erie Plain. New York Ontario Maryland Delaware West Virginia New Jersey Ohio Pennsylvania's diverse topography produces a variety of climates, though the entire state experiences cold winters and humid summers. Straddling two major zones, the majority of the state, with the exception of the southeastern corner, has a humid continental climate.
The southern portion of the state has a humid subtropical climate. The largest city, has some characteristics of the humid subtropical climate that covers much of Delaware and Maryland to the south. Summers are hot and humid. Moving toward the mountainous interior of the state, the winter climate becomes colder, the number of cloudy days increases, snowfall amounts are greater. Western areas of the state locations near Lake Erie, can receive over 100 inches of snowfall annually, the entire state receives plentiful precipitation throughout the year; the state may be subject to severe weather from spring through summer into fall. Tornadoes occur annually in the state, sometimes in large numbers, such as 30 recorded tornadoes in 2011; as of 1600, the tribes living in Pennsylvania were the Algonquian Lenape, the Iroquoian Susquehannock & Petun and the Siouan Monongahela Culture, who may have been the same as a little known tribe called the Calicua, or Cali. Other tribes who entered the region during the colonial era were the Trockwae, Saponi, Nanticoke, Conoy Piscataway, Iroquois Confederacy—possibly among others.
Other tribes, like the Erie, may have once held some land in Pennsylvania, but no longer did so by the year 1600. Both the Dutch and the English claimed both sides of the Delaware River as part of their colonial lands in America; the Dutch were the first to take possession. By June 3, 1631, the Dutch had begun settling the Delmarva Peninsula by establishing the Zwaanendael Colony on the site of present-day Lewes, Delaware. In 1638, Sweden established the New Sweden Colony, in the region of Fort Christina, on the site of present-day Wilmington, Delaware. New Sweden claimed and, for the most part, controlled the lower Delaware River region (parts of present-day Delaware, New Jersey, Pe
Blues
Blues is a music genre and musical form, originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1870s by African Americans from roots in African musical traditions, African-American work songs and the folk music of white Americans of European heritage. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and rhymed simple narrative ballads; the blues form, ubiquitous in jazz and blues and rock and roll, is characterized by the call-and-response pattern, the blues scale and specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes thirds or fifths flattened in pitch, are an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove. Blues as a genre is characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times, it was only in the first decades of the 20th century that the most common current structure became standard: the AAB pattern, consisting of a line sung over the four first bars, its repetition over the next four, a longer concluding line over the last bars.
Early blues took the form of a loose narrative relating the racial discrimination and other challenges experienced by African-Americans. Many elements, such as the call-and-response format and the use of blue notes, can be traced back to the music of Africa; the origins of the blues are closely related to the religious music of the Afro-American community, the spirituals. The first appearance of the blues is dated to after the ending of slavery and the development of juke joints, it is associated with the newly acquired freedom of the former slaves. Chroniclers began to report about blues music at the dawn of the 20th century; the first publication of blues sheet music was in 1908. Blues has since evolved from unaccompanied vocal music and oral traditions of slaves into a wide variety of styles and subgenres. Blues subgenres include country blues, such as Delta blues and Piedmont blues, as well as urban blues styles such as Chicago blues and West Coast blues. World War II marked the transition from acoustic to electric blues and the progressive opening of blues music to a wider audience white listeners.
In the 1960s and 1970s, a hybrid form called blues rock developed, which blended blues styles with rock music. The term Blues may have come from "blue devils", meaning sadness; the phrase blue devils may have been derived from Britain in the 1600s, when the term referred to the "intense visual hallucinations that can accompany severe alcohol withdrawal". As time went on, the phrase lost the reference to devils, "it came to mean a state of agitation or depression." By the 1800s in the United States, the term blues was associated with drinking alcohol, a meaning which survives in the phrase blue law, which prohibits the sale of alcohol on Sunday. Though the use of the phrase in African-American music may be older, it has been attested to in print since 1912, when Hart Wand's "Dallas Blues" became the first copyrighted blues composition. In lyrics the phrase is used to describe a depressed mood, it is in this sense of a sad state of mind that one of the earliest recorded references to "the blues" was written by Charlotte Forten aged 25, in her diary on December 14, 1862.
She was a free-born black from Pennsylvania, working as a schoolteacher in South Carolina, instructing both slaves and freedmen, wrote that she "came home with the blues" because she felt lonesome and pitied herself. She overcame her depression and noted a number of songs, such as Poor Rosy, that were popular among the slaves. Although she admitted being unable to describe the manner of singing she heard, Forten wrote that the songs "can't be sung without a full heart and a troubled spirit", conditions that have inspired countless blues songs; the lyrics of early traditional blues verses often consisted of a single line repeated four times. It was only in the first decades of the 20th century that the most common current structure became standard: the so-called "AAB" pattern, consisting of a line sung over the four first bars, its repetition over the next four, a longer concluding line over the last bars. Two of the first published blues songs, "Dallas Blues" and "Saint Louis Blues", were 12-bar blues with the AAB lyric structure.
W. C. Handy wrote; the lines are sung following a pattern closer to rhythmic talk than to a melody. Early blues took the form of a loose narrative. African-American singers voiced his or her "personal woes in a world of harsh reality: a lost love, the cruelty of police officers, oppression at the hands of white folk, hard times"; this melancholy has led to the suggestion of an Igbo origin for blues because of the reputation the Igbo had throughout plantations in the Americas for their melancholic music and outlook on life when they were enslaved. The lyrics relate troubles experienced within African American society. For instance Blind Lemon Jefferson's "Rising High Water Blues" tells of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927: "Backwater rising, Southern peoples can't make no time I said, backwater rising, Southern peoples can't make no time And I can't get no hearing from that Memphis girl of mine."Although the blues gained an association with misery and oppression, the lyrics could be humorous and raunchy: "Rebecca, get your big legs off of me, Rebecca, get your big legs off of m
The Deer Hunter
The Deer Hunter is a 1978 American epic war drama film co-written and directed by Michael Cimino about a trio of steelworkers whose lives were changed forever after they fought in the Vietnam War. The three soldiers are played by Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, John Savage, with John Cazale, Meryl Streep, George Dzundza playing supporting roles; the story takes place in Clairton, Pennsylvania, a small working class town on the Monongahela River south of Pittsburgh, in Vietnam. The film was based in part on an unproduced screenplay called The Man Who Came to Play by Louis Garfinkle and Quinn K. Redeker, about Las Vegas and Russian roulette. Producer Michael Deeley, who bought the script, hired writer/director Michael Cimino who, with Deric Washburn, rewrote the script, taking the Russian roulette element and placing it in the Vietnam War; the film went over-budget and over-schedule, ended up costing $15 million. The scenes depicting Russian roulette were controversial after the film's release.
The film won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director for Michael Cimino, Best Supporting Actor for Christopher Walken, marked Meryl Streep's first Academy Award nomination. In 1996 it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally or aesthetically significant", was named the 53rd greatest American film of all time by the American Film Institute in 2007 in their 10th Anniversary Edition of the AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies list. In the small working class town of Clairton, Pennsylvania, in late 1967, steel workers Mike Vronsky, Steven Pushkov, Nick Chevotarevich, with the support of their friends and co-workers Stan and Peter "Axel" Axelrod and local bar owner and friend John Welsh, prepare for two rites of passage: marriage and military service. Mike is a unassuming leader. Before the trio ships out and his girlfriend Angela marry in a Russian Orthodox wedding. Mike works to control his feelings for Nick's girlfriend Linda.
At the wedding reception held at the local VFW hall, the guys drink, dance and enjoy the festivities, but notice a soldier in a U. S. Army Special Forces uniform. Mike attempts to ask what Vietnam is like. After Mike explains that he, Nick are going to Vietnam, the Green Beret raises his glass and says: "Fuck it". After being restrained from starting a fight, Mike goes back to the bar and raises his glass and toasts him with: "Fuck it!" The soldier glances over at grins. Steven and Angela drink from conjoined goblets - a traditional part of the Orthodox wedding ceremony. Superstition asserts that, if they drink without spilling any wine, they will have good luck for life. No one notices two drops of blood-red wine spill on her wedding gown. After Linda catches the bride's bouquet, Nick asks her to marry him and she agrees; that night, a drunken Mike runs through the town, stripping himself naked along the way. After Nick chases him down, he begs Mike not to leave him "over there" if anything happens in combat.
The next day, Nick, Stan and Axel go deer hunting one last time. Mike is exasperated by his friends Stan, who drinks and clowns, showing little respect for the ritual of hunting, which to Mike is a nearly sacred experience. Only Nick understands Mike's attitude. Mike kills a deer with one clean shot; the friends return with Michael's deer strapped to the hood of the car. They enter rambunctiously. Welsh makes his way to the piano and begins playing Chopin's Nocturne No. 6 Op. 15-3. In Vietnam, U. S. helicopters attack a village. An unconscious Mike wakes up to see an NVA soldier shoot a woman carrying a baby. Mike kills him with a flamethrower. Meanwhile, a unit of UH-1 "Huey" helicopters drops off several U. S. infantrymen and Steven among them. Mike and Nick unexpectedly find each other just before they are captured and held in a prisoner of war camp. For entertainment, the guards force the prisoners to play gambling on the outcome. All three friends are forced to play. Steven plays against Mike, who offers moral support, but Steven breaks down and points the gun upwards while pulling the trigger, grazing himself with the bullet when it discharges.
As punishment, the guards put him into an underwater cage full of dead bodies. Mike and Nick hatch a plan to escape by playing against each other, with Mike convincing the guards to let them play Russian roulette with three bullets in the gun. After a tense match, they kill their captors and escape. After killing the guards, Mike rescues Steven; the three float downriver on a tree limb. An American helicopter finds them; the weakened Steven falls back into the water, Mike plunges in the water to rescue him. Mike helps Steven to reach the river bank, but Steven's legs are broken, so Mike carries him through the jungle to friendly lines. Approaching a caravan of locals escaping the war zone, Mike stops a South Vietnamese military truck and places the wounded Steven on it, asking the soldiers to take care of him. Nick recuperates in a military hospital in Saigon with no knowledge of his friends, having suffered some form of stress-induced amnesia. After being released, he goes aimlessly stumbles through the red-light district at night.
He encounters Julien Grinda, a Frenchman, o
Alex Haley
Alexander Murray Palmer Haley was an American writer and the author of the 1976 book Roots: The Saga of an American Family. ABC adapted the book as a television miniseries of the same name and aired it in 1977 to a record-breaking audience of 130 million viewers. In the United States, the book and miniseries raised the public awareness of African American history and inspired a broad interest in genealogy and family history. Haley's first book was The Autobiography of Malcolm X, published in 1965, a collaboration through numerous lengthy interviews with the subject, a major African-American leader, he was working on a second family history novel at his death. Haley had requested that a screenwriter, complete it, it was adapted as a film, Alex Haley's Queen, released in 1992. Alex Haley was born in Ithaca, New York, on August 11, 1921, was the oldest of three brothers and a half-sister. Haley lived with his family in Henning, before returning to Ithaca with his family when he was five years old.
Haley's father was Simon Haley, a professor of agriculture at Alabama A&M University, his mother was Bertha George Haley, who had grown up in Henning. The family had African American, Cherokee and Scottish-Irish roots; the younger Haley always spoke proudly of his father and the obstacles of racism he had overcome. Like his father, Alex Haley was enrolled at age 15 in Alcorn State University, a black college in Mississippi and, a year enrolled at Elizabeth City State College historically black, in North Carolina; the following year he returned to his father and stepmother to tell them he had withdrawn from college. His father felt that Alex needed discipline and growth, convinced him to enlist in the military when he turned 18. On May 24, 1939, Alex Haley began. Haley traced back his maternal ancestry, to Jufureh. Haley enlisted as a mess attendant, he was promoted to the rate of petty officer third-class in the rating of steward, one of the few ratings open to African Americans at that time. It was during his service in the Pacific theater of operations that Haley taught himself the craft of writing stories.
During his enlistment other sailors paid him to write love letters to their girlfriends. He said that the greatest enemy he and his crew faced during their long voyages was not the Japanese forces but rather boredom. After World War II, Haley petitioned the U. S. Coast Guard to allow him to transfer into the field of journalism. By 1949 he had become a petty officer first-class in the rating of journalist, he advanced to chief petty officer and held this rank until his retirement from the Coast Guard in 1959. He was the first chief journalist in the Coast Guard, the rating having been expressly created for him in recognition of his literary ability. Haley's awards and decorations from the Coast Guard include the Coast Guard Good Conduct Medal, American Defense Service Medal, American Campaign Medal, Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, World War II Victory Medal, Korean Service Medal, National Defense Service Medal, United Nations Service Medal, the Coast Guard Expert Marksmanship Medal.
Further, the Republic of Korea awarded him the War Service Medal. After retiring from the U. S. Coast Guard, Haley began another phase of his journalism career, he became a senior editor for Reader's Digest magazine. Haley wrote an article for the magazine about his brother George's struggles to succeed as one of the first African-American students at a Southern law school. Haley conducted the first interview for Playboy magazine. Haley elicited candid comments from jazz musician Miles Davis about his thoughts and feelings on racism in an interview he had started, but not finished, for Show Business Illustrated, another magazine created by Playboy founder Hugh Hefner that folded in early 1962. Haley completed the interview and it appeared in Playboy's September 1962 issue; that interview set the tone for. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Playboy Interview with Haley was the longest he granted to any publication. Throughout the 1960s Haley was responsible for some of the magazine's most notable interviews, including one with George Lincoln Rockwell, leader of the American Nazi Party.
He agreed to meet with Haley only after gaining assurance from the writer. Haley remained professional during the interview, although Rockwell kept a handgun on the table throughout it. Haley interviewed Muhammad Ali, who spoke about changing his name from Cassius Clay. Other interviews include Jack Ruby's defense attorney Melvin Belli, entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr. football player Jim Brown, TV host Johnny Carson, music producer Quincy Jones. The Autobiography of Malcolm X, published in 1965, was Haley's first book, it describes the trajectory of Malcolm X's life from street criminal to national spokesman for the Nation of Islam to his conversion to Sunni Islam. It outlines Malcolm X's philosophy of black pride, black nationalism, pan-Africanism. Haley wrote an epilogue to the book summarizing the end of Malcolm X's life, including his assassination in New York's Audubon Ballroom. Haley ghostwrote The Autobiography of Malcolm X based on more than 50 in-depth interviews he conducted with Malcolm X betwee
Nagant M1895
The Nagant M1895 Revolver is a seven-shot, gas-seal revolver designed and produced by Belgian industrialist Léon Nagant for the Russian Empire. The Nagant M1895 was chambered for a proprietary cartridge, 7.62×38mmR, featured an unusual "gas-seal" system, in which the cylinder moved forward when the gun was cocked, to close the gap between the cylinder and the barrel, providing a boost to the muzzle velocity of the fired projectile and allowing the weapon to be suppressed. Its design would inspire the m1893 Pieper Steyr 1893 revolver. Léon Nagant and his brother Émile were well known in the Russian Tsar's court and military administration because of the part they had played in the design of the Russian service rifle, the Mosin–Nagant Model 1891; the Nagant M1895 was adopted as the standard issue side arm for the Imperial Russian Army and police officers, where it replaced earlier Smith & Wesson models such as the Model 3. Production began in Belgium; until 1918 it was produced in two versions: a double-action version for officers, a cheaper single-action version for the ranks.
It continued to be used after the Russian Revolution by the Red Army and Soviet security forces. The distinctive shape and name helped it achieve cult status in Russia and in the early 1930s the presentation of a Nagant M1895 revolver with an embossed Red Star was one of the greatest honors that could be bestowed on a Party Member; the common Russian name for the revolver, наган became synonymous with the concept of the revolver in general and was applied to such weapons regardless of actual make or model. As early as 1933 the M1895 had started to be replaced by the Tokarev semi-automatic pistol but was never replaced until the Makarov pistol in 1952, it was still produced and used in great numbers during World War II and remained in use with the Russian Railways, postal service, some remote police forces for many years. In the Russian Federation, it was only retired from use with postal security service in 2003, from bailiff security service in 2009. Revolvers have a small gap between the cylinder and the barrel to allow the cylinder to revolve.
The bullet must "jump" this gap when fired, which can have an adverse effect on accuracy if the barrel and chamber are misaligned. The gap is a path for the escape of high pressure gases. Expensive revolvers such as Korth and Manurhin are hand-fitted. Mass-produced revolvers may have a gap as large as 0.25 mm. The M1895 by contrast, has a mechanism which, as the hammer is cocked, first turns the cylinder and moves it forward, closing the gap between the cylinder and the barrel; the cartridge unique, plays an important part in sealing the gun to the escape of propellant gases. The bullet is seated within the cartridge case, the case is reduced in diameter at its mouth; the barrel features a short conical section at its rear. By sealing the gap, the velocity of the bullet is increased by 15 to 45 m/s This feature eliminates the possibility of injury from gases escaping through the gap, which can damage a finger if the user holds the gun with a finger positioned beside the gap; the disadvantage of this design is that Nagant revolvers were laborious and time-consuming to reload, with the need to manually eject each of the used cartridges, reload one cartridge at a time through a loading gate.
At the time the revolver was designed, this system was obsolete. In England the Webley revolver used a break action that ejected all six spent cartridges. However, the Nagant design did have the advantage of requiring less machining than more modern designs; the Nagant M1895 was made in both single-action and double-action models before and during World War I. Production of the single-action model seems to have stopped after 1918, with some exceptions, including examples made for target competition. Most single-action revolvers were converted to double-action, making original single-action revolvers rather rare. Whether fired in single action or double action, the Nagant M1895 has a markedly heavy trigger pull. Enthusiasts have been able to adjust the pull by adjusting the V shaped spring, either by grinding it or shimming it; the M1895 revolver was used extensively by the Russian Imperial Army and by the Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution. In Russian service, it was known for its extreme sturdiness and ability to withstand abuse.
As one former Imperial Russian officer stated, "if anything went wrong with the M1895, you could fix it with a hammer". It was employed by the Bolshevik secret police, the Cheka, as well as its Soviet successor agencies, the OGPU and NKVD. Seven Nagant revolvers were used by communist revolutionaries to execute the Russian imperial family and their servants in July 1918. In the police role, it was seen with a cut-down barrel to aid in concealment by plainclothes agents. Despite the advent of the more modern Soviet TT pistol, the M1895 remained in production and use throughout World War II; the Nagant's sealed firing system meant that the Nagant revolver, unlike most other revolvers, could make effective use of a sound suppressor, suppressors were so
William Shockley
William Bradford Shockley Jr. was an American physicist and inventor. Shockley was the manager of a research group at Bell Labs that included John Bardeen and Walter Brattain; the three scientists were jointly awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for "their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect". Shockley's attempts to commercialize a new transistor design in the 1950s and 1960s led to California's "Silicon Valley" becoming a hotbed of electronics innovation. In his life, Shockley was a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University and became a proponent of eugenics. Shockley was born in London, to American parents, raised in his family's hometown of Palo Alto, California from the age of three, his father, William Hillman Shockley, was a mining engineer who speculated in mines for a living and spoke eight languages. His mother, grew up in the American West, graduated from Stanford University and became the first female U. S. Deputy mining surveyor.
Shockley earned his Bachelor of Science degree from Caltech in 1932 and a PhD from MIT in 1936. The title of his doctoral thesis was Electronic Bands in Sodium Chloride, a topic suggested by his thesis advisor, John C. Slater. After receiving his doctorate, Shockley joined a research group headed by Clinton Davisson at Bell Labs in New Jersey; the next few years were productive for Shockley. He published a number of fundamental papers on solid state physics in Physical Review. In 1938, he got his first patent, "Electron Discharge Device", on electron multipliers; when World War II broke out, Shockley became involved in radar research at Bell Labs in Manhattan. In May 1942, he took leave from Bell Labs to become a research director at Columbia University's Anti-Submarine Warfare Operations Group; this involved devising methods for countering the tactics of submarines with improved convoying techniques, optimizing depth charge patterns, so on. This project required frequent trips to the Pentagon and Washington, where Shockley met many high-ranking officers and government officials.
In 1944, he organized a training program for B-29 bomber pilots to use new radar bomb sights. In late 1944 he took a three-month tour to bases around the world to assess the results. For this project, Secretary of War Robert Patterson awarded Shockley the Medal for Merit on October 17, 1946. In July 1945, the War Department asked Shockley to prepare a report on the question of probable casualties from an invasion of the Japanese mainland. Shockley concluded: If the study shows that the behavior of nations in all historical cases comparable to Japan's has in fact been invariably consistent with the behavior of the troops in battle it means that the Japanese dead and ineffectives at the time of the defeat will exceed the corresponding number for the Germans. In other words, we shall have to kill at least 5 to 10 million Japanese; this might cost us between 4 million casualties including 400,000 to 800,000 killed. This report influenced the decision of the United States to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which precipitated the unconditional surrender of Japan.
Shockley was the first physicist to propose a lognormal distribution to model the creation process for scientific research papers. Shortly after the war ended in 1945, Bell Labs formed a solid-state physics group, led by Shockley and chemist Stanley Morgan, which included John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, physicist Gerald Pearson, chemist Robert Gibney, electronics expert Hilbert Moore, several technicians, their assignment was to seek a solid-state alternative to fragile glass vacuum tube amplifiers. Its first attempts were based on Shockley's ideas about using an external electrical field on a semiconductor to affect its conductivity; these experiments failed every time in all sorts of materials. The group was at a standstill until Bardeen suggested a theory that invoked surface states that prevented the field from penetrating the semiconductor; the group changed its focus to study these surface states and they met daily to discuss the work. The rapport of the group was excellent, ideas were exchanged.
By the winter of 1946 they had enough results that Bardeen submitted a paper on the surface states to Physical Review. Brattain started experiments to study the surface states through observations made while shining a bright light on the semiconductor's surface; this led to several more papers, which estimated the density of the surface states to be more than enough to account for their failed experiments. The pace of the work picked up when they started to surround point contacts between the semiconductor and the conducting wires with electrolytes. Moore built a circuit, they began to get some evidence of power amplification when Pearson, acting on a suggestion by Shockley, put a voltage on a droplet of glycol borate placed across a P-N junction. Bell Labs' attorneys soon discovered Shockley's field effect principle had been anticipated and devices based on it patented in 1930 by Julius Lilienfeld, who filed his MESFET-like patent in Canada on October 22, 1925. Although the patent appeared "breakable" the patent attorneys based one of its four patent applications only on the Bardeen-Brattain point contact design.
Three others covered the electrolyte-based transistors with Bardeen and Brattain as the inventors. Shockley's name was not on any of these patent applications; this an
