Antique Firearms 1849-1899, A four Decade Anthology: Volume I Breechloading Firearms: The Age of Invention

The era of the mid 1800s saw rapid advances in the design of breechloading longarms for the use of the American military. Some well known firearms inventors such as Christian Sharps, Ambrose Burnside and Christian Spencer saw much success in profiting from their innovative designs. Yet the ideas of other inventors were less successful — or even outright failures — due to many factors: impractical designs, manufacturing difficulties, cartridge deficiencies or just poor timing. Consequently, these inventors and their firearms have been all but forgotten…until now. Some inventors, such as Alonzo Perry, George Morse and Albert Ball saw their designs adopted by the U.S. Army and Navy. Yet another 13 inventors were far less fortunate and their stories are also told here. The author's over four decades of research and writing are collected in this anthology’s first volume of 18 chapters, with following volumes in the series that include 40 years of published articles from a variety of magazines and journals. This volume discusses the following breechloading military longarms designs: Whitney-Laidley Rifle Peabody Carbine Colt-Laidley Rifle Broughton Rifle Perry Carbines Belgian "Allin" Rifles Brand Patent Firearms Maynard Muskets Marsh Musket Morse Conversion Muskets and Rifles Ashcroft Rifle Wilson & Flather Musket Crispin Rifles Hubbell Musket Clement Musket Van Choate Musket Conroy Rifles Lamson's Ball Patent Muskets W.X. Stevens Carbine Read more