Selected Events in the Colorful History of Electromagnetic Guns

1845: Professor Charles G. Page of Columbian College (now The George Washington University), in Washington, D.C., publishes a paper in the American Journal of Science and Arts on how to build a coilgun, the first known description of such a device.

1901: Public demonstration of Kristian Birkeland's railgun at Norway's University of Oslo results in an explosion that destroys the apparatus.

World War II: Germany conducts research on railguns; Japanese study coilguns.

1951-1957: UK follows up German work on railguns; United States experiments with coilguns. Neither effort meets with much success, leading a U.S. Air Force researcher in May 1957 to conclude, “It is not likely that electromagnetic gun techniques will be successful in the near future for the attainment of hypervelocity.” Nearly all funding for EM guns ceases everywhere.

1977: At Australian National University, Richard Marshall's railgun sets the world EM gun speed record of 5.9 kilometers per second. MIT professor Henry Kolm successfully demonstrates a coilgun called the Mass Driver I, part of a NASA-funded research program on colonizing space. Later that year, both ANU and NASA decide to cancel EM gun funding.

1978: In December, Harry Fair, a solid-state physicist, wins “peanuts” from the U.S. Army to fund EM gun research.

1980: IEEE holds its first Electromagnetic Launch Symposium, organized by Fair.

1981: Fair joins the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and receives funding for research in tactical EM gun weapons. Wang Ying of China's Ordnance Engineering College reads the proceedings of the 1980 IEEE EML Symposium, gets intrigued, and begins promoting EM gun research.

1984: Strategic Defense Initiative Office supports EM gun research as part of a much bigger effort under the “Star Wars” program, to build defenses against intercontinental ballistic missiles.

1988: SDIO slashes EM gun research, backs rocket-powered Brilliant Pebbles.

1989: Study by the U.S. Army's William C. McCorkle persuades DARPA and the U.S. Army to slash remaining EM gun research.

1990: Fair leaves DARPA, founds the Institute for Advanced Research at the University of Texas at Austin, keeping a remnant of EM gun research alive.

2002: Wang Ying brings Richard Marshall to China to boost EM gun research.

2005-2007: Renewed U.S. military interest in EM guns leads to big funding boost; in China, 22 military and academic organizations pursue research. Thirteenth IEEE International EML Symposium in May 2006 draws participants from 16 countries.