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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.
The flintlock mechanism is a type of lock used on muskets, rifles, and pistols from the early 17th to the mid-19th century. It is commonly referred to as a "flintlock" (without the word mechanism). The term is also used for the weapons themselves as a whole, and not just the lock mechanism.
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 ...
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).
Muskets of the 16th to 19th centuries were accurate enough to hit a target of 50 cm (20 in) in diameter at a distance of 100 m (330 ft). At the same distance, musket bullets could penetrate a steel bib about 4 mm (0.16 in) thick, or a wooden shield about 130 mm (5.1 in) thick. The maximum range of the bullet was 1,100 m (1,200 yd).
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 ]
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".
Diagram of a Springfield Model 1855 Musket's lock mechanism. The small plate with the eagle on it is the cover for the Maynard tape system. Maynard's new system still required the musket's powder and Minié ball to be loaded conventionally into the barrel, but the tape system meant that the percussion cap no longer needed to be manually loaded onto the percussion lock's nipple.