Guns. Pieces. Firearms. Rods. Heaters. Six-Shooters. Hand-Cannons. Bullet. Shot. Cap. Cartridge. .45. .38. .22. 9mm. Flintlock. Wheel-lock. Matchlock. Caplock…

In one way or another, firearms have been around for centuries…ever since some clever guy in China discovered that if you mixed sulphur, crushed charcoal and saltpetre (that’s an old term for ‘Potassium Nitrate’) in the correct quantities…and didn’t get killed in the process…you could produce a powerful explosive! It’s impossible to imagine today’s world without guns, isn’t it? What would police-officers use on violent criminals? What would soldiers fight with? What would armed criminals use to hold up the local convenience-store with?

This article will look into the history and development of firearms from the very earliest and most primative pieces, to the first modern firearms that we would know today.

The Big Bang and the Invention of Gunpowder

Just like everything else of value, such as the compass, decent food, the wheelbarrow, martial-arts and fireworks, the Chinese invented gunpowder. The first documented proof of this comes from the early 12th Century. The Chinese were quick to grasp the possibilities of this new invention. With an explosive such as this, they could create weapons…primative weapons, that’s true, but weapons nonetheless…and weapons of a kind that nobody else at the time, had ever seen. Cannons, muskets, grenades, bombs and even naval-mines, used to blow holes in ships.

By the 13th and 14th Centuries, the Europeans had also discovered gunpowder. Early gunpowder was tricky to make, though, and highly dangerous. It took considerable experimentation in the 1200s before those people brave enough to tamper with the stuff had come up with a suitable ratio of ingredients. Europeans improved gunpowder by moistening it in a process called ‘corning’. By corning the gunpowder, makers could form the powder into cakes and then break these down into individual little granules or ‘grains’. This prevented excessive gunpowder-dust from hovering around in the air, which was a significant explosive hazard.

The First Firearms

The very first firearms were crude, dangerous inaccurate weapons, little more than a tube that was open at one end, sealed at the other and with a small hole at the sealed end of the tube called a ‘touch-hole’. Called ‘hand-cannons’ or ‘hand-gonnes’, they were merely scaled down versions of larger artillery pieces in-use at the time. Little thought was given to them and they certainly weren’t relied upon in battle. Indeed, many early guns were so impractical that they often came with forked, wooden stands or poles upon which to rest the muzzle of the gun. That way, one hand could be freed from supporting its immense weight, to hold the burning match-cord or ‘slow-match’ (a precursor to the modern fuse) to the touch-hole to ignite the gunpowder and fire the ammunition.

Firing Mechanisms – Matchlock

The very first firearms had to be set off by putting a burning match-cord into a touch-hole to ignite the powder and fire the weapon. This was adequate, but hardly ideal. With both hands, or one hand and a forked, wooden stand needed to support the length and weight of early muskets and hand-cannons, guns were dangerous, agonisingly slow, inhibiting of movement and fatally slow to reload.

In the 1300s, the first reliable firing-mechanism was invented…the matchlock.

A man firing a matchlock musket. The burning white rope is the match-cord

The matchlock worked by filling the barrel of the gun with blackpowder, then driving down your bullet and a wad of cloth or paper to keep everything firmly seated. You then filled the flash-pan with powder and closed it. After this, you fitted your smouldering match-cord into the jaws of a simple, S-shaped lock on the side of the gun. You then opened the flash-pan by hand, aimed and pulled the trigger. If you’d lined up the match-cord with the pan, then the cord came forward, ignited the priming-powder in the pan and fired the gun for you. This kept both your hands free to fire and hold the gun and kept both your eyes on the target. From the 1300s until the early 1500s, this was the most advanced firing-mechanism available, even though it was incredibly slow, allowing only about two shots a minute (if you were lucky!).

It was during the matchlock period of firearms, when guns were coming onto the battlefield which had for so-long been dominated by bows, arrows, crossbows, bolts, swords and spears, that a new word was coined.

“Bullet Proof”.

These days, we’ll add ‘proof’ to the end of anything. Waterpoof. Fireproof. Leakproof. Greaseproof. Idiotproof.

What does “proof” actually mean?

The word ‘proof’ itself means to provide evidence or to show effectiveness. Hence the term ‘proving ground’, an open area where weapons were ‘proofed’ or demonstrated to show their effectiveness. Given this definition, what is the original meaning of ‘bullet-proof’?

Originally, bullet-proofing meant proving (that is, ‘demonstrating’) that bullets could not penetrate your body-armour. Back when soldiers still marched into battle wearing plate-armour, it was the job of the armourer to “proof” his armour. This was done by firing a bullet from a matchlock pistol or musket, at the breastplate of his completed suit of armour at point-blank range. If the armour was good quality, the musket-ball left a dent in the armour’s breastplate. This dent was circled or marked in some way by the armourer so that it stood out to the enemy. This circled dent, caused by the bullet, was the “proof” that his armour was impervious to firearms. Hence the term “bulletproof”.

Firing-Mechanisms – Wheel-lock

If you’ve ever used a modern cigarette-lighter, then the basic operation of the wheel-lock firing-mechanism should be pretty familiar to you. Invented in the early 1500s, the wheel-lock was the first self-igniting firing-mechanism. It didn’t rely on a tempermental and fiddly piece of smoking cord to light the powder…it created its own lighting-mechanism through pure friction.

The wheel-lock operated by pulling the trigger, which rotated a steel wheel inside the firing-mechanism. This wheel, when rotated fast enough by the pull of the trigger, created sparks which set off the gunpowder and fired the weapon.

Although the wheel-lock was pretty advanced…for the first time you could just load a gun and shoot it, for the first time, you could (with luck) shoot a gun in the rain, for the first time, you didn’t need to fumble with burning match-cords…its downfall was that the wheel-lock firing-mechanism really was…advanced. Far too advanced to be practical. The intricacies of the mechanism made it a pain in the ass to clean, lubricate and maintain. It was also hard to mass-produce and it required master gunsmiths to be able to disassemble, repair and clean them effectively. Because of this, they died out, to be replaced by…

Firing-Mechanisms – Flintlock

The flintlock firing-mechanism is one of the most famous firing-mechanisms in the world. Half of our firearms jargon and slang comes from the flintlock. A ‘flash in the pan’, meaning a sudden idea which amounts to nothing, referred to a gun misfiring, producing a quick flash of burning powder and nothing else. ‘Going off half-cocked’, meaning to start before being fully prepared, referred to flintlock guns firing before the hammer had been pulled off its safety-position. ‘Ramrod straight’ referred to the necessity for really straight, rigid ramrods, used to help load early firearms.

The flintlock mechanism was invented in the early 1600s, and for the next, at a rough estimate, 230 years…it remained the forefront of firearms technology. Even though it couldn’t operate reliably in wet weather like the wheel-lock mechanism, the flintlock was popular for a number of reasons: It was easy to use, easy to clean, easy to make and easy to repair. Its simplicity of operation meant that anybody could pick up a musket or a pistol and know how to use it within a couple of minutes, without risk of injury. The flintlock mechanism even came with its own “safety-position’: The hammer had to be cocked twice before a gun could be fired properly. The positions, called “half-cock” and “full-cock” related to how far away from the frizzen the firing-hammer could be pulled back to. Half-cock provided access to the flash-pan and frizzen, but would not cause the gun to fire if the trigger was pulled accidently. Pulling the hammer back to full-cock meant that when the trigger was pulled, the gun would fire.

The flintlock mechanism worked by using a type of stone (called…’flint’) which was clamped into the jaws of the gun’s lock (hence the term ‘flint lock’). The piece of flint ws usually a small, sharp piece of stone which, when the gun was fired, came down and struck against a ‘frizzen’ or steel striking-plate, creating sparks. After hitting the frizzen, the flint would push the frizzen back, allowing the sparks to fall into the ‘flash-pan’ which ignited the priming-charge of gunpowder. Once the priming-charge was lit, it would ignite the main charge of gunpowder inside the barrel through the small ‘touch-hole’ next to it, setting off the gun and firing the projectile. Considerably faster and safer and easier to maintain than other firing-mechanisms, a trained soldier could fire three or four shots a minute using a flintlock firearm, or, under exceptionally good training, up to five shots a minute, or one shot every twelve seconds! A considerable change from the matchlock mechanism which only allowed one or two shots a minute, a couple of hundred years before.

Firing Mechanisms – Caplock

The caplock mechanism was similar to the flintlock mechanism, but with a few advantages: It was easier and faster to load and, unlike the flintlock mechanism, it could enable a gun to be fired in wet weather. It worked like this:

You poured gunpowder down your musket-barrel, along with a bullet and a cloth or paper wad, to stop anything falling out. You rammed it all down with a ramrod, withdrew the rod, returned it to its cradle underneath the gun-barrel, and then you fitted a small brass cap (similar, but larger than a modern child’s precussion-cap, used for toy ‘cap-guns’) over the ‘nipple’, a small metal tube above the breech of the gun, which had replaced the more bulky flintlock mechanism.

With the gun loaded and the brass cap securely placed over the nipple, you pulled back the firing-hammer, aimed and pulled the trigger. The hammer hit the gun-cap, and a chain reaction occurred. On the underside of the gun-cap was a small, impact-detonated explosive charge. When the firing-hammer hits the cap, it sets off the charge, that sends sparks and flames down into the breech of the gun. This lights the gunpowder and the subsequent burning and expansion of gases forces the bullet out of the gun.

Until the advent of the modern, self-contained cartridge…this was as advanced as firing-mechanisms got, until the later stages of the American Civil War in the mid 1860s.

The Evolution of Ammunition

Ammunition has always been changing, and throughout history, there have been several kinds of ammunition used in firearms. The three most common are the round ball, the Minie ball and the modern bullet.

Musket-Ball or Lead Shot

The earliest type of ammunition was obviously a round ball. Originally made of rounded off pebbles or stones, the musket-shot, the mainstay of ammunition up until the second quarter of the 19th century, was later made out of lead. People used to make their own lead balls by melting down lead in a small spoon or cup over a fire, before pouring the molten lead into a small bullet-mould. When the lead had hardened, the mould was opened and a small, round lead ball came out. Lead-shot was easy and cheap to manufacture, but it was hardly accurate. Due to the windage (gap) between the interior of old gun-barrels and the musket-balls manufactured to go into them, and the fact that the barrels were smoothbore, meant that these bullets were not accurate beyond about a hundred meters. With the addition of rifling to muskets, a musket-ball could be fired accurately to a range of about 200-250 meters, however.

The Minie Ball

Invented by Claude Etienne Minie in the 1850s, the Minie Ball (despite its name), is not actually a ball. It’s a conical-cylindrical projectile, very similar in shape to the modern cartridge-bullet. The Minie ball was designed to be used with another innovation in firearms technology: Rifling.

Minie Balls, the new type of ammo that replaced the musket-ball of the 18th and early 19th centuries

Rifling is the process of cutting a curved, spiralling groove into the inside of a gun-barrel. This groove allows the bullet to spin in the barrel after the charge has gone off, giving it greater accuracy. Although rifling had existed on a smaller scale before the invention of the Minie ball, when the two were combined, it allowed guns to be significantly more accurate than before. This led to devastatingly high levels of carnage during subsequent military engagements such as during the American Civil War. The Minie ball fired from a rifled musket or rifle could hit a target more than twice as far away as a comparable, unrifled musket firing a regular lead ball. However, military tactics didn’t evolve as fast as the weaponry which meant that in the earlier years of the Civil War, armies were still lining up, shoulder to shoulder in close formation, within a few dozen yards of their enemies and firing at each other, just as their ancestors had done nearly a hundred years before, in the American Revolution.

Cartridge-Bullet

The modern bullet as we know it today, or rather, ammunition as we know it today, was the result and combination of three different elements: The impact-detonated precussion-cap (seen on muskets of the American Civil War), smokeless modern gunpowder and the modern, conical-cylindrical bullet, derived from the shape of the Minie Ball. But why is it called a ‘cartridge’?

The term ‘cartridge’ as it refers to firearms, has existed a lot longer than modern all-metal cartridges and bullets. A ‘cartridge’ originally referred to a rolled up tube of paper, which contained a pre-measured amount of gunpowder and a projectile (either a lead shot or a Minie Ball, depending on the period). The ball and the powder were seperated inside the cartridge by a twist in the paper. When a soldier needed to load his musket or rifle, he ripped the paper cartridge open, poured a bit of the powder into his flash-pan, closed the frizzen and then poured the rest of the powder down the gun-barrel. He then pushed in the shot or the Minie Ball and then scrunched up the paper cartridge, stuffed it into the gun-barrel and rammed it down with a ramrod.

The modern cartridge bullet as we know it today, containing the bullet and gunpowder in a sealed metal cartridge-casing, came around in the 1840s, however, its introduction was slow. In fact, in the early years of the American Civil War, many soldiers were still firing muzzle-loaded muskets and rifles, similar to the ones their ancestors used in the Revolution. The Industrial Revolution of the 19th century saw mass-production of cartridge-bullets which gradually led to the obcelescene of muzzle-loaded, loose-powder firearms.

Multi-shot Firearms

Thusfar, this article has concentrated on single-shot firearms. Pistols, muskets, rifles, blunderbusses and so-forth. The main weakness of these firearms brings me to the next part of this article…firearms that could fire more than one shot between reloadings.

Even the Minie-Ball-shooting rifle of the 1850s and 60s, though faster to reload and more accurate than its 18th century counterpart, the flintlock musket, had one major drawback: It could only fire one shot at a time. Once you loaded it and aimed and fired, you had to reload it all over again. In the heat of battle, this was a waste of precious time. This hazard of early firearms was the kind of problem that kept gunmakers up late at night, wracking their brains for centuries, trying to find a solution.

Various interesting firearms were developed throughout history, in an attempt to invent a gun that could fire more than one round before needing to be reloaded. The famous ‘Pepperbox’ gun or revolver is one of these inventions:

The ‘Pepperbox’ Revolver

Depending on the size and number of barrels, the pepperbox revolver could fire anywhere from five to ten rounds before it had to be reloaded. Pepperbox revolvers were not terribly accurate, but they did allow people to have more firepower on them without also needing more guns.

The modern revolver or “six-shooter”, a handheld firearm capable of firing six bullets in quick succession (hence the term ‘six-shooter’) was developed from the early pepperbox revolver and became a reality in the 1840s. Samuel Colt, the American inventor and firearms manufacturer did not invent the revolver, as some people believe, he merely improved on its design. Early revolvers were blackpowder firearms, requiring the user to load each bullet, powder and wadding one by one. Early cylinders had to be turned by hand and cocked and fired one by one. Sam Colt changed this by producing revolvers that would shoot cartridge-bullets. Cocking the firing-hammer immediately lined up a new bullet and pulling the trigger fired the gun. You still had to cock the revolver again after that shot, before you could fire the next shot, but the basic modern revolver as we know it today, had been invented. This style of revolver was called the “single-action” revolver, because pulling the trigger only fired the gun, it didn’t also rotate the cylinder and cock the weapon again (the later “double-action” revolver would do this, and allow you to fire the gun even faster).

Samuel Colt was many things, but amongst other things, he was a salesman. It was he who practically single-handedly, introduced the world to the modern revolver. Indeed, the revolving-cylinder handgun was so new in the 1840s that it was still called a “pistol”. It wouldn’t be for another few years that the term “revolver” became the accepted term for Colt’s new toy.

From the 1840s until the early 1900s, handheld firearms were limited to revolvers. However, a new invention, the automatic pistol, soon changed things, affecting how fast and how many bullets a person could fire at once.

The automatic pistol was developed in the late 19th century. In its most basic form, the pistol works by pulling the trigger, which sets off a chain reaction. After pulling the trigger, the firing-pin hits the primer-cap on the cartridge, which ignites the gunpowder and fires the bullet. The recoil from the bullet firing forces the slide at the top of the gun to shift backwards, ejecting the spent shell-casing and allowing a new cartridge from the clip stored in the gun-butt, to ascend into the firing-chamber above.

The automatic pistol was a big improvement on the revolver, for various reasons. It was faster to shoot and easier to reload. But an automatic pistol did require more care than a revolver. Failure to strip down and clean the pistol properly could result in the gun jamming and failing to work properly. The simplicity of the revolver meant that most civilians and police-forces stuck with the older firearm for longer, before updating to automatic handguns.

Colt M1911 pistol. One of the world’s most famous and recognisable automatic handguns

In situations where firepower means winning, revolvers were more quickly phased out and replaced with the newer handguns. The Colt M1911, one of the most famous automatic pistols in the world, developed…as the name suggests…in 1911, was the standard-issue sidearm for soldiers and officers in the U.S. Army for nearly 90 years! The Colt 1911 was finally replaced in the 1980s and 1990s by the Beretta 92, however, it continues to be used in various areas in the U.S. Army as well as in some professional police-forces. The fact that the Colt M1911 is now almost 100 years old and still in popular use says something considerable about its design and practicality.

The big problem about writing an article about firearms is that it’s such a vast topic. So far, I’ve covered the development of gunpowder, early firearms and the development of multiple-shot handguns. That’s as far as this particular article will go, however. Additional articles on various other aspects of firearms history may surface in the future.