It is difficult for those of us living in the present to comprehend how a technology as practical as the railgun, based on so simple a concept, could have taken nearly two centuries to reach maturity. However, it must be emphasized that what are now trifling problems, easily solved with a superconductor or two, was an enormous challenges to scientists of the past who had not the benefit of modern technology. It is also important to note that our ancestors, up until the time of the great pacification of 2050, could not possibly have predicted all the plethora of uses that would arise from this technology. Undoubtedly, scientists of the late twentieth century had some notion, but those were at best vague and railgun development was considered speculative at best. What follows is a short biography of the railgun from the field of theoretical physics at the close of the nineteenth century to an obscure phenomenon in the twentieth, more in common with science fiction than science; to the full realization of its potential in everyday life fifteen years ago.

      Frank Jin
 March 8th, 2078