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The Minié ball, or Minie ball, is a type of hollow-based bullet designed by Claude-Étienne Minié for muzzle-loaded, rifled muskets. Invented in 1846 shortly followed by the Minié rifle , the Minié ball came to prominence during the Crimean War [ 1 ] and the American Civil War where it was found to inflict significantly more serious wounds ...
The accuracy of American long rifles like the Pennsylvania and Kentucky rifles far exceeded that of any smooth bore weapon. Rifles would not replace muskets on the battlefield until the invention of the Minie Ball solved the problem of barrel fouling, but prior to that, many rifles were used by U.S. forces.
The smoothbore barrel and inaccurate round ball were also being replaced by rifled barrels and the newly invented Minié ball. While older muskets had an effective range of about 50 to 100 yards (46–91 m), the Model 1855 had an effective range of 400 yards (370 m) and was deadly to over 1,000 yards (910 m).
Claude-Etienne Minié (13 February 1804 – 14 December 1879) was a French military instructor and inventor famous for solving the problem of designing a reliable muzzle-loading rifle by inventing the Minié ball in 1846, and the Minié rifle in 1849. He succeeded the pioneering work of Henri-Gustave Delvigne and Louis-Étienne de Thouvenin.
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The Minié rifle was an rifled musket used by the infantry of a number of countries in the mid-19th century. A version was adopted in 1849 following the invention of the Minié ball in 1847 by the French Army captain Claude-Étienne Minié of the Chasseurs d'Orléans and Henri-Gustave Delvigne.
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