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Hand cannon, Ming dynasty, 1379 The first firearms were invented in China, following the invention of gunpowder.The earliest known depiction of a gunpowder weapon is the illustration of a fire lance on a mid-10th century silk banner from Dunhuang. [2]
The first firearms were invented in 10th century China when the man-portable fire lance (a bamboo or metal tube that could shoot ignited gunpowder) was combined with projectiles such as scrap metal, broken porcelain, or darts/arrows. [4] [25] An early depiction of a firearm is a sculpture from a cave in Sichuan, China.
In 1861, Richard Jordan Gatling invented the Gatling gun, the first successful machine gun, capable of firing 200 gunpowder cartridges in a minute. It was fielded by the Union forces during the American Civil War in the 1860s. [88] In 1884, Hiram Maxim invented the Maxim gun, the first single-barreled machine gun. [88]
Mounted bronze guns that shot iron-fletched darts were also used in a cart style weapon that was the early hwacha. [84] Firearms seem to have been known in Japan around 1270 as proto-cannon invented in China, which the Japanese called teppō (鉄砲 lit. "iron cannon"). [85]
Gun rights advocates, gun media and the firearms industry generally claim that the word "silencer" is defined as meaning total silence, while "suppressor" or "moderator" are defined as meaning only reduced sound intensity, in spite of its original definition. [17] [18] As such, "suppressor" and "moderator" have become the suggested terms. [19] [20]
According to Joseph Needham, fire lances or proto-guns were known to Muslims by the late 13th century and early 14th century. [26] However the term midfa, dated to textual sources from 1342 to 1352, cannot be proven to be true hand-guns or bombards, and contemporary accounts of a metal-barrel cannon in the Islamic world do not occur until 1365 ...
As their name suggests, Trounds were triangular in cross-section and were made of plastic or aluminum, with the cartridge completely encasing the powder and projectile. The Tround design was also produced as a cartridge adaptor, to allow conventional .38 Special and 22 Long Rifle cartridges to be used with the Dardick firearms.
The class of firearm was originally termed the rifled gun, with the verb to rifle referring to the early modern machining process of creating grooves with cutting tools. By the 20th century, the weapon had become so common that the modern noun rifle is now often used for any log-shaped handheld ranged weapon designed for well-aimed discharge ...