The etymology may very well be as you claim. But to cling fastly to that definition and then call those experts who use the modern accepted definition “ignorant” is ridiculous. The Colt Python is not an antique or ancient firearm. The manufacturer did not designate it a double-action firearm because it does the work of two actions.
Similarly, when they manufacture hammerless revolvers in DAO, it is not because they only come with two actions. It’s because the hammer is only capable of doing two actions. It lacks the ability to be manually cocked. So it only has one action. Why would they call it DAO? Because they are ignorant?
Those ignorant sobs over at Colt had this to say in their Colt Python user’s manual:
“This revolver can be fired by single action (cocking hammer by thumb and squeezing the trigger) or double action (squeezing the trigger to cock the hammer and fire the revolver). Either way, the functioning sequence is similar.”
http://www.coltsmfg.com/cmci/downloads/Manuals/LoRes/Phyton.pdf
Funny, no mention of “self-cocking action” anywhere. Plus their use of the terms seems consistant with the currently accepted definition. You will find similar uses of the term in various Taurus revolver and pistol manuals available online.
My final comment on the issue comes from the 2001-2002 Oxford Essential Dictionary of the US Military:
“adj. (of a gun) needing to be cocked and fired as two separate actions.”
http://www.reference.com/browse/double+action also adds to the collective ignorance of us all.
“Invented by Robert Adams, a double-action trigger performs the two functions of cocking and then releasing the hammer or striker. When this term is applied to revolvers, the trigger also rotates the cylinder. Though this is technically a third action, it is correct to refer to the mechanism as double-action.”
You can’t claim that the entire world is ignorant on the subject just because you’re holding on to a definition that may or may not have been used exclusively in the past. In the present, we are not ignorant nor incorrect for using the modern definition.
Bear Nenno is right. The term “double action” means “can work in either double action mode or single action mode”, hence the need for the term “double action only”.
This is the same as the term “four wheel drive”, which means “can work in either four wheel drive mode or two wheel drive mode”, hence the need for the term “full time four wheel drive”.
Though I appreciate your endorsement, PatriotGrrrl, I don’t want people to lose sight of what the counter argument actually is.
They really aren’t denying that a “Double- Action” pistol or revolver can work in both double action and single action mode. What they are saying is that the term “double action” refers specifically to the fact that the firearm has two actions. Action, in this case being the mechanical locks, springs, cams, etc that operate to discharge the bullet.
While the original term may have actually been referencing the presence of two actions in the firearm, the term now universally refers to the trigger’s effect–or action–on the trigger.
A firearm refered to as “double-actioned” would refer to its having dual actions. However, “double action” as it is used in the modern day refers exclusively to the trigger performing two actions.
Calling people ignorant for using the modern accepted definition is pedantic and snobbish. Not to mention its just inaccurate.
DAO just adds to the evidence that it is not only ignorant, untrained, nonprofessional types who accept the modern definition. It is the manufacturer’s themselves who embrace it. Otherwise the term would be “self-cocking only” or something similar.
To make matters even muddier, there are hammerless semiautomatics like the Springfield XD which are billed as DAO because they can’t be manually cocked and they have a long heavy trigger pull but which functionally are actually single-action: the slide has to rack either manually or by recoil to cock the internal hammer before pulling the trigger will do anything.
ETA: We were originally discussing WW1 airplane machine guns? 
I’ve no clue what you folks are talking about in actuality, but I suspect that linguistically it is what seems to be called a “retronym.” That is a term that has changed because of changes in, say, technology. For instance, before Les Paul, the term “acoustic guitar” wasn’t necessary. When I grew up there was no reason to use the words “dial phone” much less “cell phone.” Might that be the case?
'Course I might be way off base here.
I have here a copy of Ian V. Hogg’s The Complete Illustrated Encyclopaedia of The World’s Firearms (1978) and in the glossary section, it lists the following terms:
Double Action
A Firing mechanism for a pistol which offers the firer two methods of discharging the shot; either he may pull back the hammer to the full-cock position and then release it by pressure on the trigger, or he may, by pulling the trigger alone raise the hammer to full cock and then release it. In general, the latter option is is used for hasty fire, the former for deliberate fire.
And
Self-Cocking
Form of revolver firing mechanism in which pressure on the trigger cocks the hammer and then release it to fire. This type of firing mechanism, although normally associated with revolvers, is also used on automatic pistols with an axial striker.
Also, Robert Adams invented the self-cocking revolver, not the double-action revolver (at least in English parlance). From the same book:
At the 1851 Royal Exhibition, Colt’s only serious competitor was Robert Adams… The Adams [Revolver] was a “self-cocking” pistol in which pulling the trigger lifted and then dropped the hammer and *The Crimean War showed the advantages of the Adams design in Close Combat, and when Lieut. Beaumont made an improvement to Adams’ lock wich allowed the user to select either single action or self-cocking action- the “double action” lock- the Adams supplanted the Colt in British service. *
Interestingly, I also have a copy of Joseph E. Smith’s 1973 Small Arms Of the World (10th Revised Edition), which is itself an update of W.H.B Smith’s 1943 Basic Manual of Military Small Arms, and the historic information section on revolvers contains this:
The English Deane-Adams revolver… was a double-action type in which a pull on the trigger turned the cylinder and cocked and dropped the hammer, a design favoured by the British even in recent years and The English Beaumont of 1855 furnished a true advance in lock work, permitting the revolver to be thumbcocked and fired by trigger pressure as in the Colt, or fired by direct double-action pull on the trigger as in the case of the Deane-Adams.
It adds The Deane-Adams, on the other hand, with its double-action system allowed for greater rapidity of fire than the cold, but relatively poor accuracy because of the long pull on the trigger… The value of the Beaumont double-action stem becomes immediatewly apprant when we see that it lends itself to thumb cocking for accurate shooting when time permits, or for straight pull through on the trigger when several shots must be fired in rapid succession or at close quarters.
Hogg is an English writer, Smith is American, in case anyone was wondering.
What this all leads me to believe is that we’re run into another British English/US English difference.
It would seem that, in British English, “Self-cocking” refers to what you lot in the US call “Double-action Only”, whilst in the US “Double Action” refers to any handgun which can be cocked and fired simply by pulling the trigger, whereas in the UK it means "Handgun which can be cocked and fired either by simply pulling the trigger, or by cocking the hammer with your thumb before pulling the trigger.*
Hogg, for example, differentiates between Adams’ “Self-cocking” revolver and Beaumont’s “Double-Action” revolver, whereas Smith refers to them both as “Double action” revolvers.
To cut a very long story short… it looks like we’re all correct. Not often that happens.
Damn regionalisms.
What a neat description!
I have always been intrigued by this design—the last time I was in DC with family, I looked at a BF-109 they had on display, in wonder at the mechanics of the airscrew-centered cannon.
I always imagined a hollow crankshaft, never thinking out the details, but as soon as I read your comment I realized that the connecting rods would pass through the centerline of any normal crankshaft somewhere during the cycle.
Now I know: the barrel didn’t touch the crankshaft at all; it was above it.
Thanks!
Thank you to YOU! When I revised the article for publication I never realized the discussion would be sidetracked by one concerning revolvers, and I appreciate that you brought it back on task. To be honest, I had prepared myself for supporting my claims that the Fokker E-Series were POS fighters* saved by their interrupter** gear.
For an example of a WWI example of a short-barreled 37mm Puteaux firing through the prop hub, see here. It was not easily reloaded in combat, but that first shot was a doozy!
-
- not especially original
** - which, as far as I can determine, never supplanted the original synchronizer gear
I can’t see any valid disagreement with that!
Well, a lot of less informed people describe the Eindecker as “fast and nimble” even though most could barely break 90mph and with lateral control accomplished through wing warping it was slow in the roll.