First recoiless air rifle patent?

[ptdunk]

Just came across this while looking for something else:

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Has this come up before? It rings a bell.

Cheers,
Matt

[Epicyclic]

Great find Matt. I spent many happy days in the old Patent Office when it was at Southampton Buildings off Chancery Lane. Although I was researching pneumatic designs and seldom wandered over to spring/piston, it was evident that the way the Brits think is the widest-ranging and imaginative in this field. It struck me that countries and regions of the world had definate characteristics of thought which was evident in the way their citizens found design solutions.
In those days you had to go on the microfiche, take notes then go hunting along the shelves with ladders on wheels, lifting the large volumes of bound Patents and carting them to your desk.
My niche was F41b and although just a drop in the ocean, kept me very occupied!
Wandering 'off piste' was interesting as other random granted Patents were juxtaposed with the numbers you decided to look at and I saw how incrediably ingenious people are and have been and also had a sense of how vast the world is!...

[Garvin]

Interesting! The 'Whiscombe' of his day.

[ptdunk]

Don’t think I have seen this before as it goes, but was reminded of ccdjg’s thread on the 1951 pre Diana Giss patent for a twin cylinder recoiless airgun.

This is from 1902, as seen in the Dennis Commins 100 yrs of airgun patent series from on the 1970’s.

The Britannia patent above it is usually seen just on its own, as in:

https://www.vintageairgunsgallery.co...2dbfaeddb9.jpg

You can only see this in the original April 1978 Guns Review article

Matt

[ccdjg]

Matt, A very interesting early patent, though it is easy to see why it was never commercialised.

In the original thread that you mentioned (https://www.airgunbbs.com/showthread...highlight=Giss) I think Mike (T20) in post 7 may have been referring to the patent you found.

In his words, when discussing who first thought of the two-piston recoil reduction idea, he says: “I thought the original patent was taken out by a Scotsman before WW2 and closely resembled the Giss and Whiscombe converging piston designs ?”. Given his description of the invention and the fact that the inventor James Picken came from Port William in Scotland, he was probably on the money.

(Incidentally, I was amused by the fact that the inventor gave his address as 'Port William... North Britain", and not 'Port William .... Scotland'. Enough to make Yousaf, Sturgeon and their like foam at the mouth.)

[ptdunk]

Ah yes, I saw his comment and wondered if it was this one.

It’s an interesting, if very complicated design.
Cocks like two break barrels back to back?

My brain can’t even process what’s going on with the trigger….

Cheers,
Matt

[AC all day]

Like Epicyclic I too spent many a happy day in Chancery Lane Patents office, that looks like an excerpt from Dh Commings work in Guns Review..... If you want big airguns check out Zalinsky who had air powered canons on HMS Vesuvius..... You start researching one thing and can go completely off at a tangent..... Oh and the smell was amazing in the library....

[DrGunn]

That’s a fascinating design, the trigger mechanism is certainly not intuitive and it’s also not entirely clear how the cocking mechanism works.
As the cylinders are not exactly in line it wouldn’t have been completely recoilless even if the timing between the pistons were perfectly synchronised.

[joffy]

the austrians were using pcp airguns in the 17-1800s