Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, and he then went on to try to sell rifles to the Army. His rifles were special…
Eli’d had a brilliant idea: if multiple rifles were built with identical parts, then soldiers could swap out parts and from, say, three broken rifles come up with two good ones. The advantages of this in a combat environment are, I trust, obvious. Eli manufactured some common rifle parts, and invited the Army for a demonstartion. His process wasn’t perfect, and if the visiting Army inspectors had looked closely enough, they might have noticed that troublesome parts had been filed down here and there to make everything fit properly. But this was good enough for demonstration purposes; Whitney had a collection of functioning rifles, the parts of which could be freely mixed and matched.
These days machines with interchangeable parts are ubiquitous. My computer, my desk, my chair, virtually everything around me is manufactured with commonality of parts and components. If material culture weren’t so disposable, I could repair any broken device by swapping out its non-functioning components for cheap-off-the-shelf replacements. (Though as it happens, we usually just throw broken things away. It turns out interchangeable parts really drive down costs.) Henry Ford showed us that we could extend this principle to an automobile, and now even a fine machine like a Cadillac is affordable.
Ironically, one device that has proven the most resistant to interchangeability is the firearm. An AK-47, which is built to loose tolerances, can interchange its parts and still operate effectively. But more sophisticated weapons cannot; fire an M-16 and its firing mechanisms tend to settle in. An M-16 is a tighter, more precise, and in many respects better weapon that an AK-47, but it can’t be monkeyed with.
By the way, does anybody recognize this? It somewhat resembles an AK-47, but internally it is decidedly non-Kalishnikov.
Click for expanded views. Piston (small silver circle under the elevation adjustment) does not travel far. Comments?
There can be a temptation to treat people interchangeably. For fairness, we subject everybody to the same rules. But when rules become too restrictive, when the tolerances become too tight, individual differences can create friction. It takes all kinds to make a world, and people need space to be themselves. In a happily illustrative display of this, a fellow I work with showed a non-interchangeable skill involving, as it happens, firearms.
He carries a Makarov, a communist knock-off of the Walther PPK. The Makarov was the standard-issue Soviet sidearm from 1951-1991, and fires a 9.3mm round. The Soviets deliberately made the round too large to fit NATO weapons because they didn’t want invaders looting Soviet ammo caches. (Which kind of tells you which way they expected the war to go.) As far as I know, this particular coworker doesn’t have much other experience with firearms. He just carries his Makarov, and that is the gun he knows.
The Makarov is ubiquitous here, and we acquired two more of them recently. Our hero picked them both up to take to another room, and said immediately, “This one’s not right. It doesn’t feel right. Better not use it.” He gestured the gun in his right hand. The other gun he seemed to think was fine. Now, except for a difference in color, the two guns were outwardly identical:
Nobody else detected anything wrong with them either; they were typical Makarovs. Upon disassembly, we discovered that our coworker’s instant evaluation had been dead-on. Here are the slides from both pistols, side-by-side. Even if you know nothing about guns, you can see that the safety mechanism (a little catch-looking thing near the top) of one of these is badly worn:
Turn on the safety (when the safety is on, a gun can’t fire) for the gun on the left when there is a round in the chamber, and this gun will go off. A worn-down safety is a common problem on the Makarov, and a potentially deadly flaw. The coworker was absolutely right; it was a bad gun.
Most people can’t tell you there’s something wrong with a gun just by picking it up. This guy could, and like an M-16 that’s been fired a few too many times, he was unique. That sort of talent should always be given room to breathe, lest it go the way of the Cadillac. (And we all know where those things end up, right?)
The end!
That rifle you have there that looks like an Ak47 but isn’t is a Czechoslovakian CZ-58 made by Ceska Zbrojovka. In all aspects, it is actually a better weapon that the Ak-47.