subject: Ion Paintball Guns [print this page] At the heart of paintball is the paintball gun, also knows as paint guns or markers. The game of paintball was started when simple paintball-shooting pistols were used as part of a "survival" game in Henniker, New Hampshire in 1981. Paintball markers continue to evolve by leaps and bounds as the sport grows.
The first paintball guns were made by the Nelson Paint Company and were called Nel-Spots. These used a 12-gram carbon dioxide (CO2) cartridge and held up to 10 paintballs internally. Nel-Spots were used in the first paintball game ever played
In addition to the Nel-Spot, the earliest paintball guns were pistols like the PMI-Sheridan PG and PGP and the NSG Splat master. These pistols also used 12-gram CO2 cartridges and held 10 rounds internally. These pistols appeared in the early 1980s and were the standard for paintball guns for a few years.
By the mid-1980s, players were looking for ways around the limitations of the original paintball pistols. Players wanted to shoot more, faster, and with improved accuracy. Inventive players started taking their original pistols and adding extensions to barrels, longer feed tubes for more paint, and devices to allow faster changes for CO2 cartridges. Soon, manufacturers and aftermarket companies started offering paint guns that had these features built in, such as the PMI-I (a larger version of the PGP) or kits that allowed easy modifications to existing pistols.
The next revolution was the introduction of electronic triggers in paintball in the mid-1990s. Commonly called "electros," these paint guns disconnected the trigger from the actual firing mechanism and enabled trigger pulls to be as short and effortless as clicking a mouse button. These guns also made very high rates of fire easy to achieve by most players. Early electros included the WGP Angel and Smart Parts Shocker
