Usability Views Article Details  home | timeline | recent | popular | e-reports | userati | books | about  Kalashnikov’s Gun (01 Feb 2005) The AK-47 illustrates the power of incremental adaptation. As a tank sergeant in World War II, Mikhail Kalashnikov saw that most Soviet troops had only carbines against the superior range of the German Sturmgewehr. While recovering from battlefield wounds, he began to create a design for a new weapon, one that could be assembled with relatively loose tolerances by relatively inexperienced workers, avoiding the supply bottlenecks that often resulted from the German cult of fine craftsmanship. A tractor plant originally produced the gun. Not only was the AK-47 simple to manufacture, but it could withstand rough handling in harsh terrain and climates. Article URL: http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/03/issue/megascope.asp Read 224 more articles from Technology Review Magazine sorted by date, popularity, or title. Next Article: Ontology-based Software Development     This site is a labour of love built by Chris McEvoy