Greatest invention in firearms history

another vote for the enclosed metallic cartridge, which enabled efficient, cheap and easy, the manufacture, transport and shooting of, and killing with, ammunition.

there are online scenarios of pitting, say, the mongol horde, against smaller units of modern soldiers. with a continuous ammunition (and gasoline) resupply, would the inflection point in favor of modern soldiery be a ww2 infantry regiment or three?

The eye exam, eyeglasses, contact lenses. We pride ourselves on being a "nation of riflemen" but how many of our forebears could see that well ? What good is the finest equipment if you can't see the target ?

230RN said:

To me, the most "artistic" sample of that would be the Luger toggle link.

Click to expand...

A refined application of his former employer, Borschardt's, C93 which, in turn, borrowed the toggle action from Maxim's machine gun.

Self contained metallic cartridge is #1 for revolutionary invention that effectively obsoleted anything that couldn't be readily converted to accept metallic cartridges.

#2 is probably rifling, for the huge increase in precision/accuracy and effective range.

#3 I would say is smokeless powder, enabling the effective development and use of self-loading repeaters and automatic weapons.

lysanderxiii said:

I would like to see someone make a compressed air cannon that can hurl a 32 pound projectile a thousand yards . . .

Click to expand...

“From 1894 to 1901, the Army purchased and installed several coastal artillery batteries of 15 inch (381 mm) dynamite guns as part of the coast defense modernization program initiated by the Endicott Board. These could throw an explosive projectile from 2,000 to 5,000 yards (1,800 to 4,600 m) depending on the weight of the projectile, from 500 to 50 pounds (227 to 23 kg). Compressed air at 2,500 psi (17 MPa) was supplied by a steam-driven compressor.”

The following sequence: Percussion cap > primer > self contained centerfire cartridge.
Alternate sequence: Percussion cap > self contained rimfire cartridge.

Just imagine if there were no contact sensitive compound that enabled the above. Flintlock & matchlock were the choices.

I don’t know whether it’s an invention, or an idea- giving a rifle to a US Marine.

P Flados said:

The following sequence: Percussion cap > primer > self contained centerfire cartridge.
Alternate sequence: Percussion cap > self contained rimfire cartridge.

Just imagine if there were no contact sensitive compound that enabled the above. Flintlock & matchlock were the choices.

Click to expand...

Did you mean rimfire or pinfire?

And there's always the sundial cannons ("noon cannons") fired by sunlight.

https://a.1stdibscdn.com/archivesE/upload/8830/30_14/p1080888/P1080888_l.jpeg

https://d3h6k4kfl8m9p0.cloudfront.net/stories/1jHtlVb-pjwSXUkdO0Ajsw.jpeg

<grin>

When Cane picked up a rock and killed his brother Abel (Actually my Bible doesn't say he used a rock. Just that he rose up and killed him.). From there it has just been a progression of ideas on how to do that better, faster and from further away.

Seriously, I don't think there has been ONE great idea. Each step just builds on the last.

The use of "Lead".

Self-contained metallic cartridge.

The biggest quantum leap in firearms was the widespread adoption of the reliable flintlock in the mid-1600's. Before that, you had unreliable matchlocks (with matches liable to go out in rain, etc.), and expensive and complicated wheellocks.

When matchlocks and wheellocks were the prevalent firearms, you had to have "pike and shot" armies, with large blocks of pikemen to protect the vulnerable musketeers. With the adoption of the flintlock (and the bayonet), every infantryman could be his own pikeman. This revolutionized tactics.

I'm going to say gunpowder, especially smokeless powder. But there are many others as whats listed in the other post.

lysanderxiii said:

I would like to see someone make a compressed air cannon that can hurl a 32 pound projectile a thousand yards . . .

When we speak of "firearms", we tend to think of small arms or individual weapons, but it does encompass artillery as well.

Click to expand...

Do a search on 'dynamite gun/dynamite cannon' - USS Vesuvius - Spanish-American War...

PRD1 - mhb - MIke

I think if you look at complete handguns per se, you have to break them down by period. Not exclusively, though.
,
The earlier ones - matchlocks - not really handguns, though
The flintlocks
The percussion caps and Revolvers
Revolvers with metallic cartridges
Semis - while we love the 1911 - USA! - it's the 9 mms starting in WWI, then the DA/SA and then the polymer strikers that dominate as a breakthrough.

Whether the RDS will be the next era is still being determined

Without getting into the chicken or the egg type of thinking...

My first thought was smokeless powder, followed by metallic cartridges. Both very important. But before that was the invention of rifling. I have to go with rifling.

Bill_in_TR said:

What would you consider to be the greatest invention in firearms history?

Click to expand...

I can't really name but one, but if forced at gun point, LOL ... then it would be the self-contained metallic cartridge. I'd also claim that the GREATEST era with the most firearm advancements occured in a mere span of ~40-years, from circa 183x to the late 1800s, where we went from:

• Black Powdah (BP) Muzzleloaders of flint ignition, to
• BP Muzzleloaders of percussion ignition
• Breech-loaders (BP) of percussion ignition, e.g., Sharps, Burnside
• Metallic (BP) cartridges of rimfire ignition, e.g., Maynards, Spencer, many others
• Single-Shot metallic (BP) cartridge arms of centerfire ignition, e.g., Trap Door, Martini, etc.
• Multi-Shot metallic (BP) cartridge bolt action arms of centerfire ignition, e.g., Swiss Vetterli or Italian Vetterli-Vitali, etc
• Multi-Shot metallic cartridge arms of centerfire ignition using smokeless powder! Then to infinity and beyond!

The evolution of arms throughout the centuries was always been one of:

... more reliable firing (punk lit handgonnes to arquebus to matchlocks with serpentines), to

... better aiming/ergonomics (stock size/shape and sights, etc.), from cheek stocked arquebuses (recall, people still wore chest armor, you CAN'T shoulder mount arms wearing such armor), to

... self-contained for ignition (wheellocks [ignited by pyrite], to snaphaunce, miquelets, English locks, doglocks and ultimately the French-style flintlock (all ignited by flint), to

... faster loading (breech-loading flintlocks like the late 1700s Ferguson Rifle and then the early 1800s [patent date 1811] Hall Breech-Loading Rifle issued to the US Army troops, to

... percussion ignition (which was the Hall Rifle changed out to ignition by percussion caps in 1830-something, the 1st percussion arm issued anywhere world-wide to a standing army), to

... metallic cartridges (more developments in the bulleted list above), to

... more shots (Generals world-wide in Trap Door era, for example, didn't trust their troops with anything but a hammer-fired rifle (for safety, as at a glance you can see 'if it is cocked'), of single shot loading (so they didn't waste ammo), or then where magazing cut-offs were used

... metallic cartridges with smokeless powdah! (Yay!)

Quite the journey, no?

And of course there are many "one of" examples out there of of WILD ideas like 'superposed' BP muskets with multiple rounds stacked in the bore (to fire off like a roman candle), to the revolving 6-shot matchlock rifle built for the French King in the late 1500s, to flintlocks that had reservoirs of balls, powder and priming powder that would load the next shot by a mere revolution of a lever on the left side of the action, to puckle or volley guns,. And there are many MORE oddities that I can't even begin to mention ... or I'll be here all day!

Re my Luger toggle link remarks:

Shanvanvocht said:

A refined application of his former employer, Borschardt's, C93 which, in turn, borrowed the toggle action from Maxim's machine gun.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the amplification. I only noted the Luger toggle as a sample of locked-breech self-loading actions because it was "artistic:"

I said,
-------------
Someone beat me to "rifling." Without it, we'd be stuck with arrow stability in our individual weaponry, although some modern artillery uses arrow stability.

Nearly tied for first in my opinion would be the various short-recoil lockup system concepts, which allowed for powerful ammo to be fired in an autoloading manner in both handguns and rifles.

To me, the most "artistic" sample of that would be the Luger toggle link. Not the bestest or efficientest, but the most... "artistic" somehow.

https://youtu.be/9adOzT_qMq0 (0:54)

Ah, yesss,... yess, baby, yesssssss. I love you...

Terry, 230RN
---------------------------

Terry

This one will blow your mind ... an actual breech-loading hand gonne dating from 1480!

lysanderxiii said:

I would like to see someone make a compressed air cannon that can hurl a 32 pound projectile a thousand yards . . .

When we speak of "firearms", we tend to think of small arms or individual weapons, but it does encompass artillery as well.

Click to expand...

Check out the dynamite guns the navy used around the 1890's - 1900 .

Smokeless powder would be my pick here.

There were cartridges for black powder, but the fouling hindered broad adoption. Look at how quickly poudre blanc spanned the globe. Rifle calibers shrunk dramatically, ranges increased nearly exponentially. And, this also opened the floodgates for MG development.

The development of the wheellock allowed firearms to be maintained at a safe, "ready-to-fire" status indefinitely, a HUGE step over having to babysit a burning match either on your person, or worse, on the cock. Everything thing else is just refinement of the mechanisms.

Amusey:

"...ranges increased nearly exponentially..."

I'll accept that as a term of art, but not as a mathematical construct. The exponent could be zero, in which case the result would be 1.

10^-1 = 0.1 (Added 03 Mar 2024 for additional illustration)
10^0 = 1
10^1 = 10
10^2 = 100
10^2.5 = 316.23
10^3 = 1000
10^3.5 = 3,162.3 (Added 03 Mar 2024 for additional illustration)

<Smartassed Terry runs back cubically to sit at the nerd table again where we all laugh logarithmically. Someone says "spherical chickens in a vacuum" and we all burst out laughing exponentially>