The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Needle Gun

a breech-loading rifle. When the needle gun was fired, a needle pierced the bottom of a paper cartridge and ignited the explosive and fuze of the percussion shell. The first needle gun with a rifled bore was the Prussian rifle created by J.N. Dreyse in 1840, which increased the rate of fire five times and had the tactical advantage that the soldier could load the rifle while in a prone position. After the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, in which the needle gun proved its superiority, A.A. Chassepot in France developed a new needle gun of better design and greater accuracy than the Dreyse rifle. The Karle rifle in Russia was very similar to the Chassepot rifle. By the late 19th century needle guns were replaced everywhere by more advanced rifles with a spring firing pin placed in the breechblock.

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References in periodicals archive

Tentative processes involved are riveting during aircraft maintenance, corrosion-control processes using needle guns, and operations using power hand saws.

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He possesses plenty of scope being closely-related to Clive Brittain's former stable stars Needle Gun and Luso, a past winner of this event.

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Now is the time to begin laying the groundwork for phone banks to needle gun owners.

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The remaining cases--Edward III's military accomplishments in the fourteenth century; Louis XIV's operational and institutional reforms in seventeenth-century France; Prussia's adaptation of the Dreyse needle gun, railroads, and expanded armies in the eighteenth century; the pre-World War I battle-fleet arms race between Great Britain and Germany; and the German quest to learn from defeat after World War I--all represent RMAs that conferred at least temporary advantages upon those who sought to incorporate new technologies, doctrines, and institutional reforms in eras of technological change and strategic uncertainty.

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From the deafening scream of a jet engine, to the constant rat-a-tat of a needle gun, loud and annoying noises are everywhere on USS George Washington (CVN 73).

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It was perfected by 1841 and called the needle gun because it had a needlelike firing pin to detonate the powder and send the bullet flying.

Needle gun

My selection goes another five furlongs here, but, out of an unraced Dalakhani mare - with the likes of Warrsan, Luso and Needle Gun in his family, Nichols Canyon, who wouldn't be disadvantaged by forecast rain, is expected to thrive for the extra yardage.

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Invented by Nicklaus von Dreyse and adopted by Prussia in 1842, the Zundnadelgewehr "needle gun" was far ahead of its time.

Beaune-la-Rolande 1870: one of the most lopsided battles of the Franco-Prussian War pitted a superior rifle against superior generalship and artillery

Warrsan's trainer Clive Brittain said: "Luso won it twice, Needle Gun was second and now their half-brother has finished third so I'll have to bring him back - three half-brothers."

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IMPRESSIVE Champagne Stakes winner Petardia (M Hills) goes into a few notebooks after the Geoff Wragg colt blunts the challenge of Clive Brittain's Needle Gun (S Cauthen).

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And to add to the bizarre sequence of events, the shooting happened outside a pub called the Needle Gun.

Real dumb at the Gun