{"product_id":"2940015121223","title":"Lewis Machine Gun in World War I","description":"Nook version of vintage magazine article originally published in 1916.  Great short with lots of nice info and pictures.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eread excerpt -\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd the Allies are indebted to American inventive genius for yet another deadly weapon. \"The Hose of Death\" and \"The Belgian Rattlesnake\" are the descriptive titles bestowed by the men in the trenches upon the Lewis machine gun, the inven¬tion of Colonel Isaac Newton Lewis, a re¬tired United States Army officer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The weapon that is the envy of all Europe\" is the way Lord Cecil describes the Lewis machine gun.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Easily the best machine gun I have ever seen,\" adds General Leonard Wood, and Lieutenant William Robinson of His Britannic Majesty's air corps, demon¬strated his opinion in a more striking manner last September by bringing a giant Zeppelin crashing down over London with well-directed fire from the gun.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut it is in the trenches and on the battle fields of Europe by night and by day that the Lewis machine gun is undergoing the ordeal by fire, and emerging successful, to add new laurels to the genius of American inventors, although the Ordnance Department of the United States Army has steadily refused to adopt the Lewis gun even in the face of expert testimony and despite the fact that each week a thousand of these guns are supplied to the Allies.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Lewis gun, although by no means perfect—the machine gun as a weapon of war has not yet cut its wisdom teeth—has many advantages. It is light—it weighs but 262 pounds and can be carried by one man alone easily, it can be quickly loaded in the dark, it is cooled by air and needs no water, it fires, with lightning-like rapidity, from 200 to 800 shots a minute, and the recoil is so slight that it can be fired from the shoulder like an ordinary rifle. Its light weight makes it peculiarly adapted to uses on airplanes, and it was the first machine gun fired from an airplane—at College Park, Md., in 1912, when it \"marked the beginning of a new era in warfare,\" as the Army and Navy Register put it. The following year a prominent banker of Antwerp chanced to witness a demonstration of the gun fired from an airplane in Belgium and was so impressed with it that within forty-eight hours he had acquired the European rights to make it.","brand":"history-bytes","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47084208783600,"sku":"2940015121223","price":5.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940015121223_p0.jpg?v=1763619132","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940015121223","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}