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Early German musket with serpentine lock. A matchlock or firelock [1] is a historical type of firearm wherein the gunpowder is ignited by a burning piece of flammable cord or twine that is in contact with the gunpowder through a mechanism that the musketeer activates by pulling a lever or trigger with their finger.
A firelock is a firearm in which the priming is ignited by sparks. [3] [4] [5] More specifically, it refers to the mechanism or lock of such firearms. It may also refer to a gun's lock which uses slow match to ignite the powder charge. [6] [7] The matchlock was a lever mechanism that simplified the ergonomics of firing. Slow match would be held ...
Springfield Model 1840 percussion conversion. The Springfield Model 1840 was a flintlock musket manufactured by the United States during the mid-19th century. The .69 caliber musket had a 42-inch (107 cm) barrel, an overall length of 58 inches (147 cm), and a weight of 9.8 pounds (4.4 kg).
One hypothesis is that the "Brown Bess" was named after Elizabeth I of England, but this lacks support.Jonathan Ferguson, Keeper of Firearms and Artillery at the Royal Armouries, traces the name to at least the 1760s, and his research suggests the name was adopted from slang for a mistress, prostitute, or lowly woman who also appear in period sources referred to as "Brown Bess".
The Springfield Model 1835 was a .69 caliber flintlock musket manufactured in the United States during the early 19th century. The Model 1835 was manufactured by the Springfield and Harpers Ferry armories and also produced by other independent contractors. It was a smoothbore musket and fired a .69 caliber round ball. [2]
A musket was a muzzle-loading smoothbore long gun that was loaded with a round lead ball, but it could also be loaded with shot for hunting. For military purposes, the weapon was loaded with ball, or a mixture of ball with several large shot (called buck and ball), and had an effective range of about 75–100 m (246–328 ft). Smoothbore ...
The term, however, remained and musket became a generic descriptor for smoothbore gunpowder weapons fired from the shoulder ("shoulder arms") into the mid-19th century. [18] At least on one occasion musket and arquebus were used interchangeably to refer to the same weapon, [ 19 ] and even referred to as an arquebus musket . [ 20 ]
Despite this, it was the British practice to include a new flint in each box of 20 rounds of ammunition for the Brown Bess musket. [7] Contemporary American military manuals suggested a flint could last for around 50 shots, but the American military followed the British practice of supplying soldiers with one flint per 20 rounds.