7.Triple-Bow Arcuballista
7.三弓床弩
Invented and perfected throughout the height of the Greek and Roman empires, the ballista was basically a giant crossbow mounted on a cart.
经过希腊和罗马帝国鼎盛时期的发明和完善，弩炮基本成形：安装在车上的巨弩。
But the arms of the bow didn't bend like those of a normal crossbow. Instead, they were solid beams of wood mounted between twisted skeins of rope.
但弩炮的弓臂弯曲程度并不如平常的弓弩。它们只是装配在拧紧的绳束之间的实心木梁。
When a lever was turned, the ends of the arms rotated toward the back of the ballista and twisted the ropes to create torsion.
当转动杠杆时，弓臂两端往弩炮后面转从而使绳子紧拧产生扭力。
It was an immensely powerful weapon, but leave it to the Chinese to say that one bow wasn't enough. They wanted three.
这是一种无比强大的武器，但对中国人来说一只弓还远远不够。三只更好。
The evolution of the multiple-bow arcuballista was gradual, beginning in the Tang dynasty with a crossbow that used two bows for added power.
多弓弩炮的研发始于唐代，最初研发者们采用双弓来增加威力。

Records from the period state that this bow could fire an iron bolt up to 1,100 meters (3,500 ft), more than three times the range of other siege crossbows.
根据当时的记录，该弓铁箭的射程可达1100米（3500 英尺），是其它攻城弩射程的三倍以上。
At least 200 years later, the invading Mongol forces inspired another arms leap for Chinese arcuballista designers.
两百多年后，蒙古军队的入侵启发了中国弩炮设计师，实现了另一个武器飞跃。
Sometime during the early Song dynasty, they rolled out the sangong chuangzi nu—the "triple-bow little bed."
北宋前期，宋人制造出了三弓床弩。
Details of this arcuballista are few and far between. But it's believed that the Mongolian army, stymied by these powerful defense machines, recruited Chinese engineers to build their own triple-bow behemoths. This eventually turned the tide of war in the Mongols' favor and led to the rise of the Yuan dynasty.
关于这种弩炮的细节少之又少。不过，据说蒙古军队曾因这些强大防御武器屡屡受挫，从而招募中国技师打造三弓巨弩，最终得以扭转战局，元代随之兴起。

6.Gun Shields
6.枪盾
Even in the 16th century, when the concept of firearms was still fresher than the pain of a first divorce, people figured out that adding a gun to something gave it at least twice the shooting power.
即使在16世纪，火器的概念仍然比首例离婚更新鲜。人们发现向某些东西添加一把枪能至少给它增加两倍的射击威力。
King Henry VIII was especially sold on the idea. In addition to a walking staff made deadly with a spiked morning star and three pistols, his royal armory included 46 gun shields like the one pictured above.
亨利八世对这个主意尤其热衷。除了带着尖刺晨星和三支手枪的致命手杖之外，他的皇家军械库还包括像以上图示的46个枪盾。
These shields were typically wooden discs with a gun poking through the center, although each was different from the next.
一般来看，这些盾牌不过是一把枪从中心伸出的木盘。
Some had iron shielding on the front and others had metal grates above the gun for sighting, but they were all regarded as decorative curiosities more than anything of actual historical interest.
虽然每个枪盾形式各异——一些有铁覆盖在表面，还有一些则在枪的上方装上金属格栅辅助瞄准——但人们认为它们作为精饰古董的意义甚于实际的历史价值。

Most of them were appropriated by scattered museums, where they gathered dust in display boxes along with other one-off oddities from the Middle Ages.
这些枪盾大都被一些小博物馆据为己有，和其它中世纪的猎奇之物一起搁置在展柜中，徒积尘埃。
But the UK's Victoria and Albert Museum recently took a closer look at their specimen and discovered that gun shields may have been more commonplace than most historians originally believed.
但英国维多利亚和阿尔伯特博物馆最近仔细察看他们收藏的标本，发现枪盾可能比大多数历史学家最初所认为的更加常用。
So they rounded up as many as they could find and got to studying.
因此他们开始尽其所能收集更多枪盾以便研究。
What they found was that several of the gun shields had powder burns from where they'd been used.
他们发现有些枪盾的枪口有着火药燃烧的痕迹。
Some of them also appear to have been designed to lock onto a ship's gunwales, where they were probably used as an extra layer of shielding as well as a line of antipersonnel fire.
其中一些还像曾被固定在船舷上，用作额外的防御层或进攻火力线。
In the end, though, it probably made more sense to keep the shields and the guns separate, so the bizarre gun shield fell into obscurity.
最后，可能因为盾牌和枪分开使用的威力更大，所以这奇异的枪盾就湮没无闻了。

5.Chinese Flamethrower
5.中国突火枪
As some of the earliest firearms, the Chinese proto-guns were a vast, imaginative arsenal that was unlike anything that had been created to that point.
作为最早的一批火器，中国最初的枪体积巨大而创意十足，不同于此前创造的任何东西。
With no prior bias for how a gunpowder-driven weapon should look, Chinese inventors had a blank canvas to create some of the most bizarre guns the world has ever seen.
由于对火药驱动武器的外形没有任何参照，中国发明家如同白纸作画，创造出了世界上最奇异的枪。
Fire lances, the first incarnation, emerged sometime in the 10th century. These were spears affixed to bamboo tubes that could shoot a burst of flame and shrapnel up to a few feet away.
火枪第一次出现在公元10世纪。最开始的形态还都是绑着竹筒的矛，但这个竹筒能发射出爆裂的火焰和弹片到几英尺外。
Some shot lead pellets, others released a burst of poisonous gas, and some fired arrows.
竹筒所装"子弹"还包括铅弹、毒气以及带火的箭。
These soon gave way to pure fire tubes as armies ditched the spears in favor of cheap, disposable bamboo guns that only gave one shot but could be mass-produced and fired one after the other.
很快，这些火枪便让位给纯火筒。此时，军队抛弃了矛转而使用成本低、使用方便的竹制火器。虽然竹枪只能射击一次，但可以批量生产，还能不断发射。
They were often given multiple barrels, leading to nearly endless flavors of death.
它们通常有多个枪管，能够造成大面积伤亡。

From the bowels of this creative mayhem emerged the sky-filling spurting tube. Historians usually call this weapon a flamethrower, but that description doesn't quite do it justice.
能漫天喷射的火器便又从这一充满创造性的致命"竹枪"中诞生。历史学家通常将其称为突火枪，但是这种表述也不是特别恰当。
Using a low-nitrate form of gunpowder, this weapon could produce continuous bursts of flame for up to five minutes.
由于使用了低硝酸盐火药，这种武器能产生长达五分钟连续爆发的火焰。
But it was the addition of arsenious oxide to the mixture that made it so lethal. The toxic smoke induced vomiting and convulsions.
但使它如此致命的是其中的亚砷酸添加物。突火枪射出的有毒烟雾会导致呕吐和抽搐。
To top it off, the barrel was often packed with razor-sharp porcelain shards. The result was instant laceration followed by a searing bath of poisonous flame.
最妙的是，每个枪管常常填装了锋利的瓷器碎片。被该武器射中的后果就是即时的割裂之痛外加有毒火焰的洗礼。
If your Chinese foe didn't kill you right away, your insides would slowly stop working from the acute arsenic exposure. Eventually, you'd fall into a coma and die.
如果你的中国敌人没有即时杀死你，你的内脏也会由于急性砷暴露而慢慢停止运转。最终等着你的就是昏迷然后死亡。

4.Percussion Pistol Whip
4.冲击式手枪鞭
On March 17, 1834, Joshua Shaw was granted a patent for the only thing that could have made Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark even better: a riding whip with a pistol hidden in the whip's handle.
1834年3月17号，约书亚·肖获得了专利，他获得专利的这个发明原本可以使《夺宝奇兵1》更加精彩迭出，那是一条带手枪的马鞭（即将手枪暗藏在马鞭手柄内）。
What made it particularly useful—and potentially dangerous—was the way it was fired.
这条手枪鞭子功力很大或者说很危险的原因在于它的射击方式。
Instead of using a trigger like most guns, the pistol had a button in the side of the handle that you could press with your thumb.
和传统使用扳机的手枪不同，手枪鞭的手柄一侧有个可以用拇指按到的按钮。

That allowed a person to hold the whip like they normally would and still have access to the pistol's trigger.
这个设计可以让人在正常拿住鞭子的同时触动扳机。
Normally, the trigger was flush with the handle, but when it was cocked, the button would stick out for immediate firing.
正常情况下，扳机和手柄齐平，但是当手柄竖起，按钮便会突起，随时准备发射。
At least one of these percussion pistol whips was actually made, although there aren't any records of them being produced in any kind of numbers.
虽然无任何记录显示这种冲击式手枪鞭的大量生产，但确实有人做出了至少一柄手枪鞭。
It exists now more as a curiosity than anything else. Its major drawback was that the pistol could only be fired once, but then again, sometimes one shot is all you need.
不过现在，人们更多将它视为奇异罕见之物而非其他。这种手枪最主要的缺点就是它只能发一枪，但有时候一发子弹就足以达到目的了。