An interesting story is told about the early days of Signor Bontempi's invention. When he set up his experimental machine at Florence, the workmen, following the example of the Luddites, rose in a body and threatened both him and his apparatus with destruction. The police had to be called in to protect the inventor, who thought it prudent to move his workshop to Naples, where the populace had broader-minded views. The Florentines are now sorry that they drove Signor Bontempi away, for they find that instead of depressing the labour market, the mechanical sculptor is a very good friend to both proprietor and employé.
NOTE.--For information and illustrations the author has to thank Mr. W. Hanson Boorne, of the Machine Sculpture Company, Aldermary House, London, E.C., and Mr. E. W. Gaz, secretary of the Automatic Sculpture Syndicate, Sumner Street, Southwark.
While science works ceaselessly to cure the ills that human flesh is heir to, invention as persistently devises weapons for man's destruction. Yesterday it was the discoveries of Pasteur and the Maxim gun; to-day it is the Finsen rays and the Rexer automatic rifle.
Though one cannot restrain a sigh on examining a new contrivance, the sole function of which is to deal out death and desolation--sadly wondering why such ingenuity might not have been directed to the perfecting of a machine which would render life more easy and more pleasant; yet from a book which deals with modern mechanisms we may not entirely exclude reference to a class of engines on which man has expended so much thought ever since gunpowder first entered the arena of human strife.
We therefore choose as our subject for this chapter a weapon hailing from Denmark, a country which, though small in area, contains many inventors of no mean repute.
In a London office, within sight of the monument raised to England's great sailor hero, the writer first made acquaintance with the Rexer gun, which, venomous device that it is, can spit forth death 300 times a minute, though it weighs only about 18 lbs.
Its form is that of an ordinary rifle of somewhat clumsy build. The eye at once picks out a pair of supports which project from a ring encircling it near the muzzle. Even a strong man would find 18 lbs. too much to hold to his shoulder for any length of time; so the Rexer is primarily intended for stationary work. The user lies prone, rests the muzzle on its supports, presses the butt to his shoulder, and blazes away. History repeats itself in the chronicles of firearms, though it is a very long way from the old matchlock supported on a forked stick to the latest thing in rifles propped up by two steel legs.