When was the rifle invented

ORO also determined that in combat the best marksmen fired no better than the worst, and firing quickly was more important than firing accurately, within reason. The BRL analyzed ballistics tests and concluded that the lethality of a bullet had more to do with its speed than with its mass.

If a small. It could fire on automatic, but because of the ammunition it was difficult to control on that setting, and most kept it set at semi-automatic to avoid wasting ammunition. Stoner to review its data. Stoner used the information to develop the AR, which he brought to Fort Benning in for trials. His new gun fired a small cartridge. It could be fired, controllably, on automatic.

The Army tested the AR and found it superior to the M at all but extreme distances and also lighter and easier to control, but remained committed to the M In Vietnam, however, Mequipped troops facing AKequipped opponents found themselves in need of a gun that could carry more rounds in its magazine and fire on full automatic.

By that time, some American soldiers had been equipped with ARs—which the Army named the M—and they asked for more. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara prodded the Army into replacing the M with the M, and by , the M had become its standard infantry weapon. Recently American military has been transitioning to the M-4, which essentially is an M with a shorter barrel. Some versions fire three-round bursts rather than full automatic. The M-4 is less accurate at long distances, but the 21st-century battlefield is more urban, and soldiers spend more time getting in and out of vehicles, so the military is willing to accept the loss of a little accuracy for greater ease of use in confined spaces.

The gun is also easier to use for smaller people, so better for many female soldiers. They differ in the details—slightly smaller bullets or slightly bigger ones, longer or shorter barrels, and so forth—which reflect different schools of thought regarding the right sweet spot between power and ease, between full-size rifle cartridges and pistol ammunition. There are also different mechanical approaches to things like how the gun uses the gas from a fired round to reload.

The basic idea, though, has remained the same since Hitler gave the weapon its name. A Colt with such lavish decoration and gold inlay is extremely rare. In the second half of the 18th century, musket design branched out. This period produced a number of single-purpose firearms. The forerunner of modern shotguns was the fowling piece, developed specifically for hunting birds.

Among the upper classes, fowling was a leisure sport. Fowling pieces for the very affluent were often lovely works of art, but impractical for hunting. The last war to use only muzzle-loaded guns. Introduced at the start of the Civil War, Spencer repeating guns were technically advanced, used cartridges a recent development , and could fire 7 shots in 15 seconds.

But the Army didn't want a repeating gun, fearing that soldiers would fire more often, constantly need fresh ammunition, and overtax the supply system. But in , President Lincoln test-fired a Spencer. His approval led to the purchase of , Spencer repeating carbines and rifles of , made , and the Spencer became the principal repeating gun of the Civil War.

Both breech and muzzle loaded guns used. Breach-loaded guns are dominant. Winchester rifles were affordable, and produced in such great numbers, that the Winchester became the generic rifle. The Winchester had such a powerful hold in some regions that it actually became known as "the gun that won the West. The next major milestone for Winchester came in , when the company introduced the first automatic rifle that would become widely used.

The first automatic pistol was created by Joseph Laumann in But the Borchardt pistol of was the first automatic with a separate magazine in the grip, and this remains the defining feature of the breed. The weapon harnessed the recoil energy from each bullet fired to eject a used cartridge and pull in the next one.

The Maxim machine gun of could fire a barrage of rounds per minute and would soon arm the British Army, and then the Austrian, German, Italian, Swiss and Russian armies. The barrage of fire generated by machine guns on all sides lead to the development of trench warfare, since shelter became critical for soldiers trying to avoid rapid-fire sprays of bullets from the new weapons. A generation later, during U. While the Thompson was developed too late to be used in World War I, its inventor, John Thompson, marketed the gun through his company to law enforcement.

But the weapon also found its way into the hands of criminals whom law enforcement was targeting. That slaughter and others like it inspired the first federal gun control law in American history: The National Firearms Act of , which forbade a private market for the Thompson.

The short-barreled weapon with steep front-sight posts and curved magazines offered the rapid-fire of machine guns with lighter-weight portability. The deadly effectiveness of the Kalashnikov in the Vietnam War led defense forces at the Pentagon to produce a new U. Both can fire up to rounds a minute. Into the 21st century, modernized versions of the fully automatic AK and the M, chiefly the M4 carbine, have dominated U. In the civilian world, the AR, a semi-automatic version of the M has become popular among gun sports enthusiasts, as well as among mass shooters in Newtown, Conn.

Today, the term semi-automatic refers to auto-loading guns that require a trigger pull for every shot fired, as opposed to fully automatic weapons which can fire multiple shots for every trigger pull. National Park Service. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. In , Connecticut-born gun manufacturer Samuel Colt received a U.

Colt founded a company to manufacture his revolving-cylinder pistol; however, sales were slow and the The event that laid the groundwork for this monumental change was the introduction of interchangeable parts, or The automobile was first invented and perfected in Germany and France in the late s, though Americans quickly came to dominate the automotive industry in the first half of the twentieth century.

Henry Ford innovated mass-production techniques that became standard, and Ford, The printing press is a device that allows for the mass production of uniform printed matter, mainly text in the form of books, pamphlets and newspapers.

Created in China, the printing press revolutionized society there before being further developed in Europe in the 15th The automated teller machine, or ATM, is such a complicated piece of technology that it does not have a single inventor. Instead, the ATMs we use today are an amalgam of several different inventions. Some of these proto-ATMs dispensed cash but did not accept deposits, for In , U. The internet got its start in the United States more than 50 years ago as a government weapon in the Cold War.

For years, scientists and Developed in the s and s by Samuel Morse and other inventors, the telegraph revolutionized long-distance communication. It worked by transmitting electrical signals over a wire laid between stations. In addition to helping invent the telegraph, Samuel Morse The Whiskey Rebellion was a uprising of farmers and distillers in western Pennsylvania in protest of a whiskey tax enacted by the federal government.

Following years of aggression with tax collectors, the region finally exploded in a confrontation that resulted in President Live TV.