A rifle is a long-barreled firearm designed for accurate shooting and higher stopping power, with a barrel that has a helical pattern of grooves (rifling) cut into the bore wall. In keeping with their focus on accuracy, rifles are typically designed to be held with both hands and braced firmly against the shooter's shoulder via a buttstock for stability during shooting. Rifles are used extensively in warfare, law enforcement, hunting and target shooting sports.
The percussion cap, percussion primer, or caplock, introduced in the early 1820s, is a type of single-use percussion ignition device for muzzle loader firearm locks enabling them to fire reliably in any weather condition. Its invention gave rise to the caplock mechanism or percussion lock system which used percussion caps struck by the hammer to set off the gunpowder charge in rifles and cap and ball firearms. Any firearm using a caplock mechanism is a percussion gun. Any long gun with a cap-lock mechanism and rifled barrel is a percussion rifle. Cap and ball describes cap-lock firearms discharging a single bore-diameter spherical bullet with each shot.
Flintlock is a general term for any firearm that uses a flint-striking ignition mechanism, the first of which appeared in Western Europe in the early 16th century. The term may also apply to a particular form of the mechanism itself, also known as the true flintlock, that was introduced in the early 17th century, and gradually replaced earlier firearm-ignition technologies, such as the matchlock, the wheellock, and the earlier flintlock mechanisms such as the snaplock and snaphaunce.
The Chassepot, officially known as Fusil modèle 1866, was a bolt-action military breechloading rifle. It is famous for having been the arm of the French forces in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. It replaced an assortment of Minié muzzleloading rifles, many of which were converted in 1864 to breech loading. An improvement to existing military rifles in 1866, the Chassepot marked the commencement of the era of modern bolt action, breech-loading military rifles. The Gras rifle was an adaption of the Chassepot designed to fire metallic cartridges introduced in 1874.
A breechloader is a firearm in which the user loads the ammunition from the breech end of the barrel, as opposed to a muzzleloader, in which the user loads the ammunition from the (muzzle) end of the barrel.
The Remington M1867 is a rolling-block rifle that was produced in the second-half of the 19th century. It was the first rifle using metallic cartridges to be adopted by the Norwegian and Swedish armies. Nominally, it had a caliber of 4 decimal lines, but the actual caliber was 3.88 Norwegian decimal lines or 4.1 Swedish decimal lines (12.17 mm), and it fired a rimfire round with a 12.615 mm lead bullet. The 12.17 mm caliber was chosen because the Swedish army had approximately 30,000 new muzzle-loading M1860 and breech-loading M1864 rifles in 12.17 mm caliber in stock, rifles that were suitable for conversion to M1867 rolling-block rifles. With the exception of the first 10,000 rifles and 20,000 actions, which were made by Remington in the US, all Remington M1867 rifles and carbines were made under license in Norway and Sweden, by Kongsberg Vaapenfabrik in Norway, and by Husqvarna Vapenfabriks Aktiebolag and Carl Gustafs stads Gevärsfaktori in Sweden with the two Swedish manufacturers producing about 80% of the weapons.
A rifled musket, rifle musket, or rifle-musket is a type of firearm made in the mid-19th century. Originally the term referred only to muskets that had been produced as a smoothbore weapon and later had their barrels replaced with rifled barrels. The term later included rifles that directly replaced, and were of the same design overall as, a particular model of smoothbore musket.
Johann Nicolaus von Dreyse was a German firearms inventor and manufacturer. He is most famous for submitting the Dreyse needle gun in 1836 to the Prussian army, which was adopted for service in December 1840 as the Leichte Perkussions-Gewehr M 1841 – a name deliberately chosen to mislead about the rifle's mechanism – later renamed Zündnadelgewehr M 1841 in 1855.
The Kammerlader, or "chamber loader", was the first Norwegian breech-loading rifle, and among the first breech loaders adopted for use by an armed force anywhere in the world. A single-shot black-powder rifle, the kammerlader was operated with a crank mounted on the side of the receiver. This made it much quicker and easier to load than the weapons previously used. Kammerladers quickly gained a reputation for being fast and accurate rifles, and would have been a deadly weapon against massed ranks of infantry.
Sharps rifles are a series of large-bore, single-shot, falling-block, breech-loading rifles, beginning with a design by Christian Sharps in 1848 and ceasing production in 1881. They were renowned for long-range accuracy. By 1874, the rifle was available in a variety of calibers, and it was one of the few designs to be successfully adapted to metallic cartridge use. The Sharps rifles became icons of the American Old West with their appearances in many Western-genre films and books. Perhaps as a result, several rifle companies offer reproductions of the Sharps rifle.
The M1819 Hall rifle was a single-shot breech-loading rifle designed by John Hancock Hall, patented on May 21, 1811, and adopted by the U.S. Army in 1819. It was preceded by the Harpers Ferry M1803. It used a pivoting chamber breech design and was made with either flintlock or percussion cap ignition systems. The years of production were from the 1820s to the 1840s at the Harpers Ferry Arsenal. This was the first breech-loading rifle to be adopted in large numbers by any nation's army, but not the first breech-loading military rifle – the Ferguson rifle was used briefly by the British Army in the American Revolutionary War. The Hall rifle remained overshadowed by common muskets and muzzleloading rifles which were still prevalent until the Civil War. The early flintlocks were mostly converted to percussion ignition.
The .577/450 Martini–Henry is a black powder, centrefire rifle cartridge. It was the standard British service cartridge from the early 1870s that went through two changes from the original brass foil wrapped case to the drawn brass of two parts, the case and the primer. The .577/450 Martini–Henry was introduced with the Martini–Henry, in service it succeeded the .577 Snider cartridge and was used by all arms of the British armed forces as well British colonial forces throughout the British Empire until it was itself succeeded by the .303 British cartridge after an unsuccessful trial of a .402 calibre.
The Enfield Pattern 1853 rifle-musket was a .577 calibre Minié-type muzzle-loading rifled musket, used by the British Empire from 1853 to 1867; after which many were replaced in service by the cartridge-loaded Snider–Enfield rifle.
The Minié rifle was an important infantry rifle of the mid-19th century. A version was adopted in 1849 following the invention of the Minié ball in 1847 by the French Army captain Claude-Étienne Minié of the Chasseurs d'Orléans and Henri-Gustave Delvigne. The bullet was designed to allow rapid muzzle loading of rifles and was an innovation that brought about the widespread use of the rifle as the main battlefield weapon for individual soldiers. The French adopted it following difficulties encountered by the French army in North Africa, where their muskets were overtaken in range by long-barreled weapons which were handcrafted by their Algerian opponents. The Minié rifle belonged to the category of rifled muskets.
The evolution of German military rifles is a history of common and diverse paths followed by the separate German states, until the mid-19th century when Prussia emerged as the dominant state within Germany and the nation was unified. This article discusses rifled shoulder arms developed in or for the military of the states that later became Germany; it excludes firearms of the Austrian Empire, except where they were used substantially by German troops.
A paper cartridge is one of various types of small arms ammunition used before the advent of the metallic cartridge. These cartridges consisted of a paper cylinder or cone containing the bullet, gunpowder, and in some cases, a primer or a lubricating and anti-fouling agent. Combustible cartridges are paper cartridges that use paper treated with oxidizers to allow them to burn completely upon ignition.
The .44 Henry, also known as the .44 Henry Flat, the .44 Rimfire, the .44 Long Rimfire, and the 11x23mmR in Europe, is a rimfire rifle and handgun cartridge featuring a .875 in (22.2 mm)-long brass or copper case. The round has a total overall length of 1.345 in (34.2 mm), with a 200 or 216 gr .446 in (11.3 mm)-diameter cast solid-lead heeled bullet. The original propellant load is 26 to 28 gr of black powder. The round has a muzzle velocity of approximately 1,125 ft/s (343 m/s), giving a muzzle energy of 568 foot-pounds.
A needle gun is a firearm that has a needle-like firing pin, which can pass through the paper cartridge case to strike a percussion cap at the bullet base.
The Königlich Württembergische Gewehrfabrik was a state owned firearms manufacturer from 1812 to 1874 and the predecessor of the Mauser arms manufacturer.
The Podewils rifle-musket was a 13.9mm calibre rifle used in the Bavarian army since 1858. It was the most common infantry weapon of the Bavarian army in the Austro-Prussian war of 1866 and the Franco-Prussian war of 1870/71. Theodor Fontane called it an "excellent" weapon of the Austro-Prussian war due to its long range. Originally a muzzleloader, it was converted to breechloading in 1867, the so-called Lindner conversion. In 1869 the Bavarian army started to replace it with the Werder breechloader, but due to budgetary constrains by 1870 most Bavarian troops still used the Podewils while only four infantry battalions had received the Werder. Even the Lindner conversion was inferior to both the Prussian Dreyse needle gun and the French Chassepot.
