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Engineers during World War Two test a model of a Halifax bomber in a wind tunnel, an invention that dates back to 1871.. The following is a list and timeline of innovations as well as inventions and discoveries that involved British people or the United Kingdom including the predecessor states before the Treaty of Union in 1707, the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland.
Ferguson rifle. Also in 1776, Major Patrick Ferguson patented his breech-loading Ferguson rifle, based on old French and Dutch designs of the 1720s and 1730s.One hundred of these, of the two hundred or so made, were issued to a special rifle corps in 1777, but the cost, production difficulties and fragility of the guns, coupled with the death of Ferguson at the Battle of Kings Mountain meant ...
It was invented by Richard Jordan Gatling and fielded by the Union forces during the American Civil War. Self-loaders use energy to reload. The first successful self-loading rifle was the Mondragón rifle. The world's first machine gun was the Maxim gun, developed by British inventor Sir Hiram Maxim in 1884.
The most widely used British hammerless needle-fire shotgun was the unusual hinged-chamber fixed-barrel breech-loader by Joseph Needham, produced from the 1850s. By the 1860s hammerless guns were increasingly used in Europe both in war and sport although hammer guns were still very much in the majority.
Old Japanese weapons and other military paraphernalia, c. 1892–95 A Gilbertese shark-toothed weapon (late 19th century). Major innovations in the history of weapons have included the adoption of different materials – from stone and wood to different metals, and modern synthetic materials such as plastics – and the developments of different weapon styles either to fit the terrain or to ...
The lower tier of English ships of the line at this time were usually equipped with demi-cannon – a naval gun which fired a 32-pound solid shot. A full cannon fired a 42-pound shot (and in fact there was a so-called "royal cannon" that fired a 60-pound shot), but these were discontinued by the 18th century as they were seen as too unwieldy. [8]
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]