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2nd Lt. Val Browning with the Browning Automatic Rifle in France during World War I. An automatic rifle is a type of autoloading rifle that is capable of fully automatic fire. Automatic rifles are generally select-fire weapons capable of firing in semi-automatic and automatic firing modes (some automatic rifles are capable of burst-fire as well).
In 1913, Fedorov submitted a prototype automatic rifle with a stripper clip-fed fixed magazine, chambered for his own experimental rimless 6.5 mm cartridge, 6.5mm Fedorov. This new rimless ammunition was more compact than the rimmed Russian 7.62×54mmR , better suited for automatic weapons and produced less recoil but occasionally caused jamming.
The Maxim gun is a recoil-operated machine gun invented in 1884 by Hiram Stevens Maxim.It was the first fully automatic machine gun in the world. [15]The Maxim gun has been called "the weapon most associated with imperial conquest" by historian Martin Gilbert, [16] and was heavily used by colonial powers during the "Scramble for Africa".
The first successful self-loader was the Gatling gun, a hand-cranked revolver. It was invented by Richard Jordan Gatling and fielded by the Union forces during the American Civil War. Self-loaders use energy to reload. The world's first machine gun was the Maxim gun, developed by British inventor Sir Hiram Maxim in 1884.
During World War II, the Sturmgewehr 44 rifle used by German forces made a deep impression on their Soviet counterparts. [ 11 ] [ 12 ] The select-fire rifle was chambered for a new intermediate cartridge , the 7.92×33mm Kurz , and combined the firepower of a submachine gun with the range and accuracy of a rifle.
Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim (5 February 1840 – 24 November 1916) was an American-born British inventor best known as the creator of the first automatic machine gun, the Maxim gun. [1] Maxim held patents on numerous mechanical devices such as hair-curling irons , a mousetrap , and steam pumps .
The StG 44 was the first successful assault rifle, with features including an intermediate cartridge, controllable automatic fire, a more compact design than a battle rifle with a higher rate of fire, and being designed primarily for hitting targets within a few hundred metres. [5]
The heavy machine gun is a term originating in World War I to describe heavyweight medium machine guns and persisted into World War II with Japanese Hotchkiss M1914 clones; today, however, it is used to refer to automatic weapons with a caliber of at least 12.7 mm (0.5 in), [3] but less than 20 mm (0.8 in). A general-purpose machine gun is ...