The Colt 2000 was the legendary American company’s response to the Austrian Glock pistol-and the worst of the company’s many recent misfires. Only 1,000 Colt 1855s were built and the entire concept was abandoned by the gun industry. Having the action close to the face was also dangerous in case the weapon suffered a mechanical failure or explosion. Unfortunately for Colt, the weapon was a failure: the open nature of the revolver-cylinder system and the amount of noise it produced was acceptable in a weapon held at arm’s length, but not in a weapon held close to the face. An attempt was made to bring revolver-level firepower to the world of rifles, the Colt 1855 Revolving Rifle. The revolver system, which promised up to six fast-firing shots before reloading, was quickly adopted as the standard pattern on handguns. Nineteenth-century American inventor Samuel Colt created the modern revolver, receiving a patent for an early design in 1836. service with the much improved M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle. While the gun deserves credit as the first of its kind, the fact that all major armies removed it from service at the end of the war speaks for itself. Despite these shortcomings the Chauchat soldiered on, mostly because there was nothing to replace it with. The gun was poorly designed and often punched the shooter in the eye or cheek if improperly held. The weapon was capable of only firing three hundred rounds between jams under the best of circumstances, and the trenches of the Great War were far from that, with mud and dirt liable to work its way into the Chauchat’s innards through its many openings and foul the weapon. Made for the French and later American armies during World War I, the Chauchat even looked like it was made from bicycle parts, using a great deal of metal tubing nearly identical to that found in bicycle frames. Produced by the Gladiator bicycle company, the French Chauchat machine gun was the one of the very first squad level automatic weapons ever produced.
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