by Tom Gaylord
Writing as B.B. Pelletier
This report covers:
- Table of contents
- What is an airgun?
- The first airgun
- What we do know
- The load-compression airgun
- What came next?
- Bellows gun
- How rare were they?
- Multi-pump pneumatics
- Spring-piston airguns
- Catapult guns
- CO2 guns
- Single stroke pneumatics
Table of contents
Before we begin today’s blog, I want to tell you there is a link to the History of airguns table of contents at the top and bottom of this pager. Go there and you will see all the historical report linked.
Today’s report will sound like a continuation of Friday’s report on the power of big bore airguns of the past, but that is just a coincidence. Today we look at the timeline of airguns.
What is an airgun?
Before we proceed we need to agree what an airgun is, or the rest of the discussion will be meaningless. Most books about airguns start with the primitive blowpipe, which is also called a blowgun. Does that make you think of natives on tropical islands, hunting birds and monkey in the trees? Would you be surprised to learn that the blowgun was also very popular in Europe during the middle ages? There are tapestries that show hunters using blowguns in exactly the same way as the islanders in the tropics, only they are doing so in European and English forests. The blowgun has been a very popular air-powered weapon all around the world.