Guns and Rifles of the World

This folio sized book contains over 100 illustrations to provide the collector, dealer and museum official with a comprehensive and representative visual reference work on the guns and rifles of the world. With the help of these pictures it is possible to date and place with some exactness any unfamiliar gun or rifle. An extended Introduction, itself as long as a book, traces the technical and decorative development of guns and rifles from the forteenth to the later nineteenth century. The text covers all Ignition Systems and there are special chapters on Multi-shot mechanisms - superimposed charges, revolvers, magazine guns, etc. The pictures, which include reproductions of old engravings as well as drawings made specially by the author, have been similarly arranged. Since many of the weapons have been photographed specially for the book, a large number of the pictures will be fresh even to the expert. Text and illustrations are so closely inter-related that each clarifies and illuminates the other. Notes on the Illustrations provide further technical and historical data on a range of selected individual pictures. As a graphic encyclopaedia, the book is so comprehensive in its coverage and so original in its approach that, for most experts, it will take the place of existing one volume surveys of the guns and rifles of the world. Illustrated.