Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 18.djvu/290

* SMALL ARMS. 244 SMALL ARMS. period with the addition of a serpentine or cock for holding the match. The serpentine was hung upon a pivot which, passing through the stock, formed a lever for the hand. Before the weapon could be discharged it was necessary to bring the serpentine in contact with the burning match on the barrel, until the former was ignited, after which the lever was raised and the serpentine brought into contact with the priming of the touch-hole and the gun discharged. The next im- provement was to reverse the position of the serpentine and provide a spring to hold the match away from the touch-hole, after which a certain amount of pressure brought to bear upon the lever caused the serpentine with the lighted match to fall into the flash-pan. In the nature of things the effect of the fire- arms of this period was more of a moral than a destructive character. Many strange varie- ties of firearms gradually came into use, such as combinations of club and pistol, of pistol and battle-axe, and particularly the 'holy water sprinkler,' which latter consisted of a strong mace formed by four or more barrels ar- ranged as is the chamber of the modern re- volver. An improved invention in the form of the wheel-lock was made in 1515. It con- sisted of a grooved steel wheel, having a ser- rated edge connected to the lock-plate by means of a chain and spring. The spring power was obtained by winding the wheel so that when the gun was charged the wheel would be wound up, the cover of the flash-pan withdrawn, and the pyrite which was held in the cock permitted to come in contact with the wheel, hen the trigger was pressed the check on the wheel was released, and .sparks produced by the friction of the wheel against the pyrite and the priming Firing Pii Breech ■Screw III., and in one form or another remained in use in the British army up to as late a period as 1840. Crude forms of repeating, breech-loading, re- volving, and magazine weapons sprang up here and there throughout Europe, but they are of interest only as showing that these principles which form so important a part of our modern weapons are not in themselves modern. It is in the improved methods of ignition which Forsyth made possible that the next important step in the evolution of small arms was accomplished. His invention dates from 1807, and is described bj' him as "a detonating principle for exploding gunpowder in firearms, etc." Slany subsequent improxenients in the sysWm were made by the manufacturers whom the patentee engaged to make the guns. The percussion principle was applied first to muzzle loading and afterwards to breech-loading guns, and, strangelj' enough, did not at first appeal to the various governments of Europe as suitable for weapons for military purposes. Modern Military Rifles. Although the prin- ciple of rifling small arms dates from the begin- ning of the sixteenth century, it was not till toward the close of the seventeenth that the principle was employed for military weapons. Owing to the fact that the rifle could not be Exfrsctor /EJectorSpring and Spind/e Barre/ Cam Lafch Cam LatchSpnng Bofl'om of Receiver BREECH MECHANISM OF U. S. yPHINGFlELD BIFLE. CALIBRE .45 INCH. ignited the charge. Owing to its expense, the wheel-lock gun was used almost entirely for sporting purposes, and soon after this the use of firearms in the chase became general. The flint-lock, which followed the wheel-lock, seems to have been of Spanish origin and to date from early in tlie seventeenth centviry; in it the process of igniting the charge was considerably simplified. The hammer or cover-plate was forced backward by the bolt so that the flint, which was screwed in the Jaw of the cock, and the priming in the flash-pan were exposed to the sparks caused by the contact of the flint and the hammer, and thus the charge was ignited. The flint-lock was a long time coming into favor, owing to the fact that in its original form the sparks frequently escaped without firing the charge. Flint-lock muskets were first intro- duced into England during the reign of William loaded after a few rounds had been fired, some method had to be found to obviate the difficulty; none, however, proved satisfactory until an Eng- lish gunmaker in 1836 devised a bullet of egg- shaped construction which had a cavity at one end to receive a conical plug which under pres- sure of the gas generated by the discharge ex- panded the bullet into the grooves. The Mini^ rifle of the French was the next improvement on this principle; in that an iron cup was utilized to expand the cone when forced home by the gas. In the three-grooved Enfield rifle (English) of 1855 a wooden plug was used instead of the iron cup. Next followed the Whitworth hexagonal rifling, which made possible the use of a bullet of a more elongated design and which lowered the trajectory of the bullet by offering a smaller front to the resistance of the air. The first breech-loading small arm of conse-