Термин "автомат" - американский по происхождению?
Перечитывал вот эту книгу, о которой уже упоминал и наткнулся на интересное. Для понимания - книга издана в Детройте, Мичиган, в 1920-м году, написана участниками, американскими офицерами из 339-го Пехотного полка, по свежим впечатлениям боевых действий Союзников на Русском Севере против Красных в 1918-19 годах. И что бросилось в глаза - явное противопоставление в терминах станковых и ручных пулеметов. Не поленился, вырезал все подходящие отрывки, где в тексте параллельно идет речь об их применении. Но самое главное - использование по отношению к ручному пулемету термина "automatic":
....of the improvement of our ferocious-looking armored train, with its coal-car mounted naval guns, buttressed with sand bags and preceded by a similar car bristling with machine guns and Lewis
automatics in the hands of a motley crew of Polish gunners and Russki gunners and a British sergeant or two.
His infantry recoiled from the Lewis gun and machine gun fire of the Americans that covered the bridge and its approaches.
In fact the Americans, hearing of actions at the fronts, were desperately striving to learn how to use the Lewis guns and the Vickers machine guns. At Camp Custer they had perfected themselves in handling the Colt and the Brownings but in England had been obliged to relinquish them with the dubious prospect of re-equipping with the Russian automatic rifles and machine gun equipment at Archangel. (прим. - Я уверен, что если бы совково-руснявые поцреоты владели "американским" и читали что-то глубже мурзилок, то они бы увидели свидетельство "автомата Фёдорова", но на самом деле естественно имеются в виду поставленные еще по царским заказам Льюисы и Шоша, менее вероятно - Мадсены.)
Now they were feverishly at work on the new guns for reports were coming back from the front that the enemy was well equipped with such weapons and held the Americans at great
disadvantage. Here let it be said that the American doughboy in the North Russian campaign mastered every kind of weapon that was placed in his hands or came by fortune of war to his hand. He learned to use the Lewis gun and the Vickers machine gun of the British and Russian armies, also the one-pounder, or pom pom. He became proficient in the use of the French Chauchat automatic rifle and the French machine gun, and their rifle grenade guns.
And in the morning of the 9th of November the good old Vickers guns and Lewis guns were peeking from their old concealed strongholds on the American side of the Emtsa
Finally the enemy machine guns were spotted and put out of action by the superior fire of our Lewis automatics, and the Bolshevik leader, Shiskin, was killed at the gun
Meanwhile the seven Stokes mortars were putting a fifteen-minute barrage of shells, a great 1000-shell burst, on the Bolo trenches, which added to the 20-gun machine and Lewis gun barrage, demoralized the Red front line and gave the two infantry companies fifteen minutes later an easy victory as they swung in and on either side of the road advanced rapidly toward Kodish village.
Really it is no wonder that the several Allied troop barracks were always guarded by machine guns and automatics.
Time after time well directed bursts of machine gun fire momentarily held up group on group of the attacking party, but others were steadily and surely pressing forward, their automatic rifles and muskets pouring a veritable hail of bullets into the thin line of the village defenders. Our men fought desperately against overwhelming odds. Corporal Victor Stier, seeing a Russian machine gun abandoned by the panic-stricken Russians in charge of same, rushed forward and manning this gun single-handed opened up a terrific fire on the advancing line.
At the sixteenth verst pole Lieut. Ballard had two of his machine guns, a Lewis gun crew and some forty-six men from "K" Company
The machine guns faltered only once and then a Yankee Corporal, William Russell, Company "M" 339th Infantry, won for himself a posthumous American citation and D. S. C. for his heroic deed in regaining fire control by engaging the enemy machine gun which crawled up to short range in the thick woods with his Lewis gun.
Отчетливо видно, что это слово - краткий вариант термина automatic rifle, появившегося в американском английском не позднее 1912-го года (U.S. Automatic Machine Rifle Model of 1909) и употребляется в основном как синоним с Lewis gun.
Правда есть в тексте и один момент, когда термин этот употребляется по отношению к пулемету Кольт: Meanwhile the Polish troops refused to go back into the fighting line to help stem the Bolo attack. Peremptory order brought two of their Colt automatics up to the line where for forty-five minutes they engaged the enemy, but again retired to the rear and assisted only by firing their machine gun over the heads of the Americans and British battling for their very lives all that afternoon in the long thin line of American O.D. and British Khaki.
Но это потому, что именно так в американской терминологии тех лет он и назывался.
В русский военный лексикон слово "автомат" на замену громоздкой французской по происхождению конструкции "ружье-пулемет" введено, насколько я обладаю информацией, генералом Филатовым около 1916-го года. До этого, примерно с рубежа веков, это слово в русском попадается, но в значении "автоматический пистолет". Возникает вопрос - а не калька ли это с "американского", благо в РКВП уже пошли Льюисы и Кольты?
P.S. Ну и просто инетресным показалось, в дополнение: As the ice and snow daily disappeared more and more Americans began arranging "booby traps" and dummy machine gun posts in the woods. These machine gun posts were prepared by fastening a bucket of water with a small hole punched in the bottom above another bucket which was tied to the trigger of a machine gun or rifle. The amount of water could be regulated so as to cause the gun to fire at regular intervals of from thirty minutes to an hour. Through the woods we strung concealed wires and sticks attached to hand grenades, the slightest touch of which would cause them to explode. Meanwhile in the rear, "B" Company Engineers, who had relieved "A" Company Engineers, were busily engaged in stuffing gun cotton, explosives and inflammable material in every building and shed at Kitsa and Maximovskaya.