Dr. Howell,
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<br>There is a thread running on history and this got me thinking about one of the most under rated Ballistics desginer of cartiadges of the 20th century. You seldom see his name or hear of his work in the 1910,20 and 30's.
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<br>I am speaking of Charles Newton. I woundering if you would share your thoughts on his work and what he brought to our collective interest. I am aware that he designed the follow cartiadges..
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<br>250 Savage
<br>300 Savage
<br>256 Newton
<br>35 Newton
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<br>I am sure I have missed some and that is part of the reason I am asking.
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<br>Given the powders and what the state of art was at his time, it amazes me that these cartiadges of his hold up so well to this day. The 300 Savage is the bases for the .308, the 256 is basicly the 6.5-06 that is comming into vogue now with many a wildcater, and the 250 savage is a sweat dual purpose, better then most 6mm in my mind.

For my money, Charles Newton deserves far more posthumous recognition than the currently canonized P O Ackley. Newton originated a bunch of superb cartridges AND a pretty darn good set of actions. He just saw too far ahead with his designs and not well enough up close with his business. A number of his best cartridges suffered from their use of special-size cases -- and are now being virtually raised from the dead in the form of "new cartridges" recently introduced. He was definitely far in advance of the rest of the shooting world, and it didn't help that -- as Jennings (below) has revealed -- the "experts" of the day published a lot of stuff about his cartridges that just wasn't accurate (a problem for both designers and readers to this day!).
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<br>Bruce M Jennings, Jr, tagged Newton accurately in the title of his excellent 1984 book, "Charles Newton -- Father of High Velocity." I hope Jennings still has copies available. His address is 70 Metz Road; Sheridan, WY 82801. The OLD phone number that I have MAY still be good -- 307-674-6921