What stopped 18-19th century armies with guns from being able to create automatic weapons like AK-47s and Uzis?
Since they don’t use electricity I feel like they’re made with materials and technology that was already available in the 1750s, surely they could’ve put their heads together to create a machine gun and just annihilate any ops…
Thanks
In: Engineering
There’s steel, and then there’s steel. It has to have the right characteristics. That’s getting each piece right. Then there’s tolerances – how much too big or small the pieces can be, so they fit together but still move where required.
Then there’s the ammunition…
No automatic gun has been made which did not use parts made on a lathe, and the all metal lathe was literally *just* invented in 1751, and it took many more years before it was a common tool.
Three things, mostly:
1. What precision machine tools existed in that time period were very rare and expensive and also just not all that precise.
2. Poor materials science meant that metals were more brittle or just plain weaker and couldn’t handle the high thermal/stress load.
3. It was difficult to mass manufacture parts and especially ammunition – the first cartridge was invented at the turn of the 19th century but even then it was paper and couldn’t be manufactured in bulk like brass cartridges can be.
Yeah, basically they were all really stupid. If only you had been around to explain to them how stupid they are then we’d all be living on Mars
>they’re made with materials and technology that was already available in the 1750s
That’s the thing. The manufacturing technology wasn’t there at the time. The rifle cartridge hadn’t been invented and wasn’t possible at the time, and the capability to make guns with the tolerances, materials, and durability to withstand operating conditions didn’t exist.
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