Machine Gun

Gun loaded and fired by machinery. The Gardner, Maxim, Gatling, Colt, and Hotch ki revolving cannon are the best developed types. The gun consisting of several barrels, the feed device, and working machinery, is solidly mounted on wheels for ease of transportation: it belongs to the infantry, since it uses small arm ammunition and cannot cope with field artillery. It has no appreciable recoil, so that when once directed the mechanical operations of loading and Maxım Machine Gun. firing do not disturb the aim or working, or prevent its being rapidly directed upon any desired point. Such guns are valuable against a column of infantry, in defense of roads, bridges, or other defiles, to sweep the ditches and faces of permanent works, and for their moral effect in street fighting against mobs and rioters. In naval service they are mounted in the tops of ve els, to sweep the enemy's decks, repel boarders, and the like. formed to adapt the motion and the power to do industrial work at the tool or operating point. There will be machinery of transmi ion for carrying power from the point whence it is derived to the points where it is to be used, and for conversion or transformation (usually called mechanism) by which a number of different motions are made to result from a few simple motions of the few primary motors. In Economics, mechanical devices by which production can be increased and cheapened to an extent limited only by the amount and value of the capital invested and the efficiency of the labor used in connection with the machinery.