History of the Rifle

A detailed Summary of History of the Rifle

Throughout history humans have a natural sense to accomplish tasks. Most of these are to establish laws and order, and how do we keep this safe? This is the other natural human sense, the ability to be violent. Yes, warfare has been apart of history as well as government and travel have. Nothing has done more to change the way we make war more than the gun has. As Mark Twain put it "They are the most deadly and unerring things that have ever been created by man." - Advice to Youth speech, 4/15/1882

The rifle is one type of gun that has revolutionized the field of combat. The first mentioned of the use of rifled small arms is found in an edict of the Swiss government issued in 1563. The first such weapons were crude and were of little value when used with the spherical bullets and cannonballs at the time(Encarta 1 of 9). This is a pretty hard concept, but think of it more aerodynamic, a baseball or a rocket?

There were three reasons for the rare use of rifles during the ante-bellum. 1) The process of making holes in the bore of the gun (to allow rifling) was very costly at the time. (They all had to be made by hand)(Trinity1 of 4) 2) the rifles fired ball ammunition that could not fully feel the benefit of rifling.{though

Then the United States entered world war one the primary weapon of this war as you may have guessed was the rifle. The models were the 1914 and the 1917 model Enfield rifles. This war was the first with the implication of the machine gun; the rifle gave the soldier the accuracy he needed to take out a gun emplacement several hundred yards away(Encarta6 of 9). What the Americans could not build they bought, they signed a deal with the French to produce a light machine gun. The guns received seemed well built but with deadly flaws. The gun was designed to be massed produced the problem there was no universal part code which meant all the parts at the different factories were not compatible. When one gun broke the other parts would not fit, deeming the gun useless. Also if that was not enough the guns magazine (the place where the ammunition was kept) had holes in the side to reveal how much ammo one had. As you may imagine dirt and mud found its way in almost every gun causing it to be famous for jamming.

Where the future of the rifle takes us still remains uncertain; we as humans have reached a focal point in the development of arms. The rifle has been a major player in the shaping of today. It has determined the fate of nations and has put man facing man on the field of combat. Rifle was and still is one of the most innovative accomplishments of mankind; it is this authors prediction the rifle will be used on the battlefields of today and the battlefields of tomorrow.

The other major player in the invention trend was a man named Henri-Gustave Delvigne. He was a French army officer and inventor who designed innovative rifles and helped introduce the cylindrical bullet.(Encarta6 of 9) In 1826 he introduced the Delvigne rifle, the powder chamber was slightly narrower than the barrel. When the rifle ball was dropped down the barrel against the chamber, a few blows of the ramrod expanded the ball to fit the rifled grooves snugly.(Encarta) Although this system had several drawbacks (such as the slow time to load) it performed well in Algeria and was used extensively. (Encarta 5 of 9) Delvigne began experimenting with elongated bullets as early as 1830.(Encarta 5 of 9) He designed a cylindro-conical bullet with a hollow base that would expand to fit the riflin

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Approximate Word count = 1534
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History