Abstract
THE new Remington negative angle system of sighting, which formed the subject of a lecture by Sir George Greenhill, F.R.S., to the Junior Institution of Engineers on Friday, January 19, is the invention of Mr. H. Ommundsen, worked out and applied to military and sporting rifles in collaboration with Mr. E. Newitt. The invention has for its object the elimination of the necessity for judging distance in sport and war by making use of the visual angle which proceeds from the shooter's eye and embraces the object aimed at. By inverting the backsight, making it so that the object can be seen under it instead of over, as at present, the object can be callipered visually between the fore- and back-sight. The magnitude of the visual angle varies inversely with distance, and the further off the object is the smaller will be the visual angle, and consequently the higher the foresight has to be raised in order to calliper the object, the result being a suitable automatic increase of elevation. This automatic variation of elevation may be obtained simply by selecting a point of aim at a predetermined depth below the objective. This predetermined depth creates a visual angle, which varies in precisely the same way as above described, and being below the objective the angle automatically subtracts from the fixed angle of elevation on the rifle, and is thus called the “negative angle.” The fixed angle of elevation on the rifle is calculated beforehand to give appropriate results within limits which depend upon the power of the cartridge. Applied to sporting rifles, the negative angle sight gives astonishing results. With the comparatively old 0.303 deer-stalking rifle, or with, say, the 0.400 big-game rifle, animals can be shot through the heart at any distance between, say, 30 and 230 yards, without in any way altering the aim or adjusting the sight. Some tests have been carried out by the Remington Arms-U.M.C. Company, of New York and London, who have acquired the whole patent rights. In the military tests the skirmishing results bounded up from less than 20 per cent, under the old style of sights to 95 under the negative angle method. On “stag “targets with the ordinary 0.303 sporting rifle, 7-inch “heart “groups were made with unfailing regularity at varying distances between 50 and 250 yards.
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A New System of Gun Sighting . Nature 88, 459 (1912). https://doi.org/10.1038/088459b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/088459b0