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A pistol is a usually small, hand held, projectile weapon, meant for personal use (used by one person) in short-range action. In the 15th century the term was used for small knives and daggers which could be concealed in a person's clothing. By the 18th century the term came to be used exclusively to refer to small firearms, or additionally, and more recently, similar devices designed for the aimed discharge of projectiles by the force of gas pressure stored by other than chemical means (" air pistol").
Nowadays there are three main varieties of pistol: " automatic" self-loading pistols, and revolvers, being by far the two most common types, followed distantly by single-shot hunting or target pistols. Pedantically, the chamber wherein a pistol's charge is ignited, is fixed in relationship to its barrel—thus the term technically excludes revolvers, although in colloquial usage this distinction is often ignored, and revolvers are quite commonly, albeit informally, referred to as "pistols".
Revolvers feed ammunition via the rotation of a cartridge-charged cylinder, in which each cartridge is contained in its own ignition chamber, sequentially brought into alignment with the weapon's barrel by a mechanism linked to the weapon's trigger (double-action), or its hammer (single-action). These nominally cylindrical chambers, usually numbering six, are bored through the cylinder so that their axes are parallel to the cylinder's axis of rotation; thus, as the cylinder rotates, the chambers revolve about the cylinder's axis.
In 1997, the Mateba 1997 company has developed a new and unique type of automatic revolver, commercialy named the Mateba autorevolver , which uses the recoil/gas energy to auto-rotate a normal revolver cylinder holding 6 or 7 cartridges, depending on the model. The purpose was to create a pistol combining the relative power and reliability of revolvers with the rapid fire feature of semi-automatic pistols. The company has made several versions of its "autorevolver", including longer barelled and even rifle-like variations, usually chambered for .357 Magnum ammunition.
The term may be derived from the FrenchFrench le francais la langue francaise is one of the most important Romance languages, outnumbered only by Spanish and Portuguese. French is the 11th most spoken language in the world, spoken by about 77 million people (called Francophones) as a mother to pistole (or pistolet), which, in turn, comes from the CzechThe Czech Republic ( Czech: Ceska republika is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The republic borders Poland to the north, Germany to the northwest and west, Austria to the south, and Slovakia to the east. Historic Prague, a major tourist attraction pistala (flute or pipe, referring to the shape of a HussiteThe Hussites comprised an early Protestant Christian movement, followers of Jan Hus. This predominantly religious movement was also propelled by social issues and coincided to some extend with the first stages of the Czech national self-awareness. Effect firearmA firearm is a kinetic energy weapon that fires either a single or multiple projectiles propelled at high velocity by the gases produced by action of the rapid confined burning of a propellant. This process of rapid burning is technically known as deflagr). Other suggestions have been made—that it comes from city of PistoiaPistoia (ancient Pistoria is a city in the Tuscany region of Italy, the capital of a province of the same name, located about 30 km (18 mi) west and north of Florence. The town was a Roman colony in the 6th century BC, and in 62 BC Catiline and his fellow, ItalyThe Italian Republic or Italy ( Italian: Italia is a country in the south of Europe, consisting mainly of a boot-shaped peninsula together with two large islands in the Mediterranean Sea: Sicily and Sardinia. To the north, where it borders France, Switzer, where perhaps a manufacturer was one Camillio Vettelli in the 1540Events January 6 King Henry VIII of England marries Anne of Cleves, his fourth Queen consort. July 9 King Henry VIII of England divorces Anne of Cleves, his fourth Queen consort. July 28 One of the most important political figures of the reign of Henry VIs; or that early pistols were carried by cavalry in holsters hung from the pommel (or pistallo in medieval French) of a horse's saddle.
In the 1780s, Alessandro Volta built a toy electric pistol ([1]) in which an electric spark caused the explosion of a mixture of air and hydrogen, firing a cork from the end of the gun.