Henry Ernest Dudeney/Puzzles and Curious Problems/322 - The New Gun/Solution
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Puzzles and Curious Problems by Henry Ernest Dudeney: $322$
- The New Gun
- An inventor undertook that a new gun which he had manufactured, which when once loaded,
- would fire fifteen shots at the rate of a shot a minute.
- A series of tests were made, and the gun certainly fired fifteen shots in a quarter of an hour.
- However, the Government refused to buy the gun, on the grounds that it did not do the job as advertised.
- Why?
Solution
For the same reason they did not buy the gun in the puzzle published as $99$ - The Rejected Gun in Dudeney's $1926$ collection Modern Puzzles, of which this is a retread:
- An inventor offered a new large gun to the committee appointed by our Government for the consideration of such things.
- He declared that when once loaded it would fire sixty shots at the rate of a shot a minute.
- The War Office put it to the test and found that it fired sixty shots an hour,
- but declined it, "as it did not fulfil the promised condition."
- "Absurd, said the inventor, "for you have shown that it clearly does all that we undertook it should do."
- "Nothing of the sort," said the experts. "It has failed."
- Now, can you explain this extraordinary mystery?
- Was the inventor, or were the experts, right?
Sources
- 1932: Henry Ernest Dudeney: Puzzles and Curious Problems ... (previous) ... (next): Solutions: $322$. -- The New Gun