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Although breech-loading firearms were developed as far back as the early 14th century in Burgundy and various other parts of Europe, [3] [4] breech-loading became more successful with improvements in precision engineering and machining in the 19th century. The main challenge for developers of breech-loading firearms was sealing the breech.
The Dreyse needle-gun was a 19th-century military breech-loading rifle, as well as the first breech-loading rifle to use a bolt action to open and close the chamber. It was used as the main infantry weapon of the Prussians in the Wars of German Unification.
The M1819 Hall rifle was a single-shot breech-loading rifle (also considered something of a hybrid breech and muzzle-loading design) designed by John Hancock Hall, patented on May 21, 1811, and adopted by the U.S. Army in 1819. It was preceded by the Harpers Ferry M1803.
At this time however, many officers were distrustful of breech-loading weapons on the grounds that they would encourage men to waste ammunition. In addition, the Sharps rifle was expensive to manufacture (three times the cost of a muzzle-loading Springfield rifle ) and so only 11,000 of the Model 1859s were produced.
The end result was that a modern, breech-loading rifle was approved for use on the 18 May 1842. The caliber chosen for the new rifle was 18 lødig ; in other words, one could manufacture 18 round bullets out of one Norwegian pound of lead. In modern terms this means the caliber of the rifle was 17.5 mm.
The Serbian Peabody rifle (Serbian: Пушка система Пибоди, Puška sistema Pibodi) is a single-shot breech-loading rifle made and used in the Principality of Serbia in the second half of the 19th century. It was the first Serbian military rifle to use metallic cartridges. [3]
The term Joslyn Rifle refers to a series of rifles produced in the mid-19th century. The term is often used to refer specifically to the Joslyn Model 1861/1862, which was the first mass-produced breech-loading rifle produced at the Springfield Armory.
Breech-loading weapons proved to have a much faster rate of fire than muzzleloaders, causing military forces to abandon muzzle loaders in favor of breech-loading designs in the late 1860s. In the later part of the 19th century, rifles were generally single-shot, breech-loading guns, designed for aimed, discretionary fire by individual soldiers.