So I'm watching The Maltese Falcon And Sam Spade calls what is plainly a revolver an automatic.
→[More:]A little googling (and the magic of DVRs) reveals that Webley-Fosbery made an
automatic revolver. And not only was such a thing made the gun in the movie is an actual
Webley-Fosbery Self-Cocking Automatic Revolver easily recogonisable by the grooves in the cylinder just as Sam says it is. Pretty amazing for a piece of kit that they made less than 5000 copies. However he calls it a 45 caliber 8 shot and wiki says only the .38 had eight shots, the .455 only had six.
Who says you can't learn anything watching TV?