Tom Swift would be pleased
Starting around the 1880s and progressing through the Great War, or in other words the gaslamp Victorian/Edwardian-era, a series of pulp novels appeared with a host of fictitious “Edisonade” brilliant young inventors: Tom Swift, Frank Reade Jr., Jack Write and others whose adventures were full of pluck and included the high tech forward thinking science of the era including radios, electric weapons, electrical land vehicles, steam powered robots, airships, rockets and submarines.
One of these books, a 1911 work titled Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle, was used as the acronym (TSER) of a less lethal gun that projected a set of barbed hooks that delivered a potent electric charge, incapacitating most targets– the TASER.
Incidentally, last week the District of Columbia agreed to lift its prohibition on civilian ownership of Tasers as part of a lawsuit filed in federal court.
In the two-page order, signed by U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg, the city agreed not to enforce its current ban on Tasers and other electronic arms for lawful self-defense in residences while lawmakers hammer out a new and more accommodating law.
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