A POWERFUL GUN.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXII, Issue 4321, 23 September 1921, Page 1

A POWERFUL GUN.

APPLICATION TO MINING. The name of Sir Edgar Jones, M.P., having been mentioned in connection with the new. long-range noiseless gun with which experiments have been made in America, he was asked by the London correspondent of the Manchester Guardian if rhe reports received from America were correct; He replied: “I 'have seen the gun, and took a lot of interest in it when I was in New -York. But I am not interested in it as a gun, but in its application to industry, particularly to coal-mining and quarrying. It is a very small, instrument, that will make blasting with powder unnecessary. These developments are proceeding, and one of these days I think we shall have a very considerable and remarkable development. “It is true that as a gun it will revolutionise gunnery, because it has no recoil 'and makes no noise. The inventor is not keen at all in applying his discoveries to destruction, but in making them applicable to production. And it is from that point of view that I am interested. “Who is the inventor. 1 “He lives just outside - London, and is working away to apply the invention to industrial purposes. But as a gun I think our own people .were getting reddy to use it before the war ended. The Inventor is a very clever man. He was a member of the Inventions Beard, and has several important inventions all over the world. The arrangements for the trials of which .the cable messages speak now were made when I was in New York. “What of its applicability to mining ? “Well, here is the instrument (measuring a space of about a foot). The man with it goes up against the face of coal. He works the instrument. and, ‘biff, splits the whole face of the coal. Then all he has to do is to get the coal out. It is not a blasting operation. It is just the delivery of a blow at a terrific velocity on a small patch which cracks the whole piece. It will crack granite or slate or any hard rock,. It is very small, but very complicated and very effective. There is no contact with the air,. and therefore no sound and no recoil. It is based on new mechanical principles absolutely.”

Sir Edgar Jones added that it was too early yet for experiments underground. As to the invention’s qualities as a gun, he said the difficulty with big guns hitherto had been that big guns required huge carriages and a great foundation-of concrete. But in this invention there was ho noise

or recoil. Fired on board ship there would be none of the tremendous percussion which there hitherto had been.