Below is an interesting article on the history of firearms.......
Firearms History-Stops and Stories Along the Path by Kathleen Krueger, as originally printed in the AGI Workbench
It’s summer, and that’s the red, white and blue season here in the good old U.S. of A. A time when we proudly commemorate the ideals and freedoms our country stands for in both our Memorial Day, and Independence Day, celebrations. At times like these, when those First Amendment rights are being challenged from many different avenues, it serves us well to take a backward glance and be reminded of those who laid the foundations of our great nation and those who have fought hard to preserve those freedoms, that we so dearly cherish. And just as it is fitting to review those well known names and events in our history books, of those who laid the groundwork for our present day nation, it is also well worth remembering, those who have played significant parts in the development of the firearms we enjoy today. Let’s take a little journey back through gun history and take note of some of those men that have brought an even broader appreciation to the ‘right to bear arms’ than what it had for those who authored that first amendment to our constitution.
It seems appropriate to begin our firearms history lesson in 1776 and the Revolutionary War. Here we find a fascinating story about some of the first breech-loading rifles used in combat. According to the "Illustrated Encyclopedia of Firearms" (a fascinating resource, by the way), a Scotsman named Patrick Ferguson demonstrated his breech-loading rifle to the Master General of the Ordinance and made quite an impression by firing his gun at a steady rate of four to five shots a minute while walking towards the target, loading and firing as he went. One hundred ‘Ferguson Rifles’ were ordered to be made for the military and a special ‘Light Company’ of 100 men were equipped with the rifles and sent to America
under the command of Patrick Ferguson himself. Unfortunately Ferguson was first wounded and then eventually killed in battle and his company scattered. Only one or two of those 100 rifles are known to exist today. Even though the Ferguson Rifles served well in their limited use, it wasn’t until 1819 that breech-loading rifles became the standard for military use by the issuing of the Hall Carbine to United States military.
Shortly prior to the 1819 date of the breech loader becoming the standard, another important development along the history path occurred. It was in 1807, the same year that Robert Fulton revolutionized river travel with the introduction of the steamboat. That important point in firearms evolution was the patenting of a percussion firing system by the Reverend Alexander James Forsyth in England. The percussion principle, combined with the ongoing development of breech loading, became the turning point necessary to take firearms from its former slow development to a series of fast paced improvements in both the areas of ammunition and the guns themselves.
The self-contained cartridge, credited to J. Pauly from Switzerland, followed shortly behind the percussion firing system just a year later in 1808. Both Napoleon and the Czar of Russia hailed Pauly’s guns for this important piece of ingenuity. Pauly’s casings were made of paper rather than the brass that has become the standard of today. The French gunsmith Casimir Lefaucheux patented one of the earliest self-contained, and pin fired, cartridges in 1827. Then in 1846 M.Houiller improved on the Lefaucheux cartridge by introducing a fully metallic casing of copper brass. The one primary limitation of the metal casing which hampered its initial acceptance was the added mechanical complication of removing the expended cartridge from the weapon after firing. Eventually the value of the metal cartridge simply pushed gunsmiths to become creative in the developing of ejection systems as well.
As you can see, gunsmiths all over the world were experimenting with these newly introduced enhancements to firearm weaponry, and those experiments were moving in many different directions at
once.
During the early 1800’s the revolver mechanism was also making its entrance onto the scene. The ability to fire repeated rounds without reloading had long been a desired option, especially for military purposes. It was in 1818 that Captain Artemus Wheeler of Concord, MA patented a multiple discharge gun. It was his assistant Elisha Collier, however, who turned his idea into the revolving chamber, which was connected to the hammer, allowing the chamber to automatically revolve each time you cocked the hammer. It wasn’t until many years later that the revolver finally gained popularity. It was a man named Samuel Colt who introduced the revolver on the international scene during the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, which claimed over 6 million visitors.
From this point on, the path of firearms through history focused mainly on firing faster and further. The automatic pistol was first developed by Schonberger in 1893 but it was hampered by the requirement of specialized ammunition and it was the Borchardt that became the first marketable success. The Mauser and then the Luger followed close behind in the last few years before the turn of the century.
The natural progression from the automatic pistol was the automation of rifle fire. The magazine-fed rifle was first developed by the Germans during WWI, but it was General John T. Thompson who first coined the term ‘sub-machine gun’ and the small rapid fire machine gun with which we are most familiar. It gained the nickname ‘Tommy Gun’ during its popular use by gangsters such as Al Capone and Machine Gun Kelly and then entered into military use during WWII.
The trail of the gun continues to develop throughout the Twentieth Century but without a lot of major developments, the latest of these being the use of the small caliber assault weapon, which has now become the military’s preferred rapid fire weapon.
The gunsmiths whose names fill this report were ordinary men who loved their craft. As a follower in their footsteps, you stand in good company with men who have influenced history in big and small ways just by committing their time, energy and resources to maintaining and improving the world of firearms.
