Rievaulx

3998

Rifle

1832 until his death he was professor of
sculpture at the Dresden Academy. Among his
works are Pieta (Potsdam, c. 1847); Em-
blematic Sculptures (Dresden, 1852 et seq.);
Goethe-Schiller Monument (Weimar, 1857);
Rauch (1857), and Weber (Dresden, 1860).

Rievaulx Abbey, or Rivaulx, in North
Riding, Yorkshire, England; 22 m, n, of York.
It was founded in 1131 for the Cistercians. It
now consists of ruins of the choir, transepts,
refectory, and dormitory.

Rif, Riff, or Er Rif, a coast range of hills
in Northern Morocco, near the Mediterra-
nean, 180 m. in length. The general elevation
is about 2,000 ft., and the greatest altitude
about 7,000 ft. The name is given also to
the district. The inhabitants are Berbers, who
were formerly much addicted to piracy.

Rifle, a firearm the barrel of which has
spiral grooves throughout its inner surface or
bore. As commonly used, the word refers to
rifled small arms fired from the hand, but it
is applied sometimes to direct fire cannon of
all calibres. The projectile, forced along the
barrel by the explosion of the powder charge,
follows the grooves of the rifling, and ac-
quires a motion of rotation about its long
axis, which rotation it retains during flight
through the air. At the time of its invention,
the only successful small arms were muzzle
loaders, so naturally the first successful rifle
was a muzzle loader. The date of the dis-
covery of the principe of rifling is not known
to a certainty. Some authorities state that it
was between 1470 and 1500.

In Europe little important improvement
was made until the beginning of the igth cen-
tury. In America, development was more
rapid, and the improvements were more
practical; so that even before the Revolu-
tionary War the rifle was in general use by
frontiersmen. Meanwhile the Brunswick rifle,
having two grooves, and firing a spherical
bullet with a projecting ring around it to
take the rifling, made its appearance. The
Lancaster rifle was introduced into the British
service at about the same time as the Enfield.
Instead of grooves it had a smooth, spiral,
elliptical bore of increasing twist. The next
great change in military rifles was the adop-
tion of the breech loader. In 1812 Pauly, a
Frenchman, evolved a breech-loading rifle
with a swinging block; and Dreyse, working
under him, developed the first needle-gun
bolt action in 1839, Dreyse's bolt action was
modified and adopted by the Prussians; and
the success of the Prussians in the Danish
and Austrian wars caused all nations to adopt

breech loaders. The U. S. in 1873 adopted the
Springfield. A few years before World War
II it adopted the Garand (M-i), a .3o-calibcr
semi-automatic shoulder rifle.

The next great departure in the military
rifle was the introduction of the magazine.
The repeating firearm was brought out in
America by Colt in 1840, followed in 1860
by the Henry and Spencer rifles. In 1867 the
Henry was improved and re-named the Win-
chester. Magazines may be grouped in two
general classes: the tubular, in which the
cartridges are contained in a tube under the
barrel; and the box, in which the cartridges
lie above or alongside one another in a small
metal box under the breech mechanism.

Rifles that have tubular magazines are
generally called repeating rifles, and those
that have box type magazines, magazine rifles.
In the United States, after an exhaustive test,
the Krag-Jorgensen rifle was adopted hi
1892, superseding the Springfield single load-
er; and in 1902 the Krag-Jorgensen was su-
perseded by the Springfield magazine rifle,
which was modified in 1903. This is a bolt
action rifle with a vertical box magazine
filled by means of a clip holding five cart-
ridges. The natural successors of the repeat-
ing and magazine rifle are the automatic and
semi-automatic rifles. The term 'automatic'
means that the weapon continues to fire as
long as the trigger is pressed, until the maga-
zine or the belt of ammunition is empty.
The term 'semi-automatic' means that the
firer must press the trigger for each shot.
Automatic and semi-automatic rifles fall in-
to three classes: gas-operated, recoil-oper-
ated, and blow-back.

Machine guns are classified as water-cooled
and air-cooled. The air-cooled type of ma-
chine gun has a heavier barrel than the
water-cooled type, and the entire weapon is
lighter, but its period of sustained fire is
materially shorter on account of over-heating
of the barrel. Only air-cooled types of ma-
chine guns are used on aircraft. The ma-
chine rifle is a modified automatic rifle. It
has a heavier barrel than the automatic,
which gives it a longer period of sustained
fire. It is usually supported by a light bi-
pod, somewhat heavier than the automatic
rifle, and, in the same manner as the lat-
ter, is provided with means for obtaining
either automatic or semi-automatic fire. Am-
munition for use in automatic and machine
rifles is packed in magazines of from 20 to
40 rounds capacity.

The production of the rifle is a complicated