Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle

Saturday, December 12th, 2015

The modern Taser was named after Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle. The name is an acronym for Thomas A. Swift’s Electric Rifle. And it rhymes with laser, of course.

If you haven’t read any of the original Tom Swift novels, be warned: they could not be more dated. I particularly enjoyed this passage from the 1911 novel:

That’s just what I want. Elephant shooting in Africa! My! With my new electric rifle, and an airship, what couldn’t a fellow do over in the dark continent!

His new invention is not a stun gun, by the way.

Comments

  1. Bill says:

    I can find you something earlier than that. How about Jules Verne, in 1875?

    “Besides M. Aronnax, you must see yourself that, during our submarine hunt, we can spend but little air and but few balls.”
    “But it seems to me that in this twilight, and in the midst of this fluid, which is very dense compared with the atmosphere, shots could not go far, nor easily prove mortal.”

    “Sir, on the contrary, with this gun every blow is mortal; and, however lightly the animal is touched, it falls as if struck by a thunderbolt.”

    “Why?”

    “Because the balls sent by this gun are not ordinary balls, but little cases of glass. These glass cases are covered with a case of steel, and weighted with a pellet of lead; they are real Leyden bottles, into which the electricity is forced to a very high tension. With the slightest shock they are discharged, and the animal, however strong it may be, falls dead. I must tell you that these cases are size number four, and that the charge for an ordinary gun would be ten.”

  2. Slovenian Guest says:

    Bill’s comment made me think of the bulletproof water Mythbusters episode, another myth where they get to fire some guns and show that underwater shots indeed don’t go far nor easily prove mortal…

  3. G706 says:

    Wow that quote takes me back to childhood reading my dad’s old Tom Swift books.

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