Put the two guns side by side and the relationship is OBVIOUS.
Strip them down and lay the parts out and the similarity is inescapable.
We made a TV program here about 15 years go, some nice Baroque music for an intro, then on the screen: Artillery Road Show. It was a question-and-answer kind of thing for local Access TV, won a national award. It was done at a local gun show; Dennis DeForest, Cornelius Ens and myself were the commentators. It was done just as the Chinese SKSs were hitting the market and there was a fellow there WITH a PTRS (which is a pretty outrageous chunk of iron to look at) so I did my finest "I don't know nuthin'" media-idiot act (which I can do fairly well, BEING an idiot at times and having spent many years IN the media)..... and we got some very perceptive and technically-correct commentary regarding the relationship between the two guns. Simonov HAD a good working design for an AT rifle and he NEEDED a Carbine...... so, why not? Worked, too.
Wikipedia is getting better all the time. The first time I heard of it, I dialed it up and looked at two topics: "Ross Rifle" and "Necronomicon". I found out that the Ross Rifle was a complete POS and the Necronomicon was possibly an all-too-real book. But Wikipedia improved as it was edited and re-edited. Right now, the only thing I don't like about it is what I consider its over-reliance on PRINTED sources; there is not enough room for original research, especially in historical affairs (such as the Ross Rifle question) in which the printed sources very nearly ALL support the "official story" and the veterans who used them (along with another 98 years of field trials) support the Rifle.
As well, it tends to regard one statement as worth as much as another, H.P. Lovecraft's "I invented it when I was 12 years old" regarding the Necronomicon counting for as much as some lunatic's talk about a book of unimaginable creeping EE-VIL brought by the Elder Gods from Out Of Space And Beyond Time. ("Very scary, kiddies, very scary!" sez Count Floyd.)
Well, I'm outta here for a little while. Gotta go do a human sacrifice or 3 or 4 if I can find a source of cute nubile females with exceptionally low moral standards.
But beware of placing TOO much reliance on books. Always remember they are WRITTEN by people such as ME.
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