Air Rifles in History

[asmurff]

With all the interest of late in the forum about air guns, I remembered Lewis and Clark carried one on their expedition. Being the history nerd I am I looked for more info on it, here is what I found.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girandoni_Air_Rifle

[techmike]

.46 cal - and a repeater - the "assault weapon" of the 1700's!

[Tal]

Looks cool, but they never showed a demo. Did I hear correctly that you have to pump it up 1500 times with a bicycle type pump?