As I wrote in Want to publish something in the newspaper?, readers are invited to submit letters, articles, stories, commentaries etc for publication.
This piece, from a person whose name is not revealed, is about the invention of the rifle. I hope you enjoy it.
The Gun that Won the West
The key players in the invention and development of what was called the Henry rifle and became known as the Winchester are:
Walter Hunt, the noted American inventor who conceived of a "piston breech and firing cock repeating rifle."
Lewis Jennings, who improved on Hunt's concept with introduction of the tubular magazine. The problem with Hunt-Jennings rifle was the ammunition: it wasn't a real cartridge round, but a hollow lead bullet back-filled with gunpowder, with unacceptable muzzle velocity.
Horace Smith (later to partner with factory manager Daniel Wesson) invented the first self-contained cartridge, the humble rimfire .22, the most significant advance in weaponry since the flintlock musket, and possibly the invention of gunpowder.
Benjamin Tyler Henry took Smith's cartridge and upgraded it to the .44 rimfire, then redesigned the Hunt-Jennings repeater around this cartridge, resulting in the famed Henry Rifle, which first saw action in the Civil War and is considered a decisive factor in the Union victory over the South. (The lever action was invented by Christopher Spenser and first used in the Spenser Rifle in 1860).
John Moses Browning working for the Winchester company, which had acquired patents for the Henry rifle, refined the gun that culminated in the Winchester 1894. Browning replaced the toggle link action with the more reliable block action and upgraded the ammunition.
So many gunsmiths and inventors participated in the development of the Winchester, which reached perfection in Browning's 1894 version (it sold 7,000,000 copies world wide) that it's impossible to attribute the gun to any one man. For example, the side loading gate, a major improvement, was invented by Nelson King.
If you want to know more about the invention and development of the rifle, you can use the names above to research at Wikipedia.
Posted by R.P. BenDedek Email: rpbendedek@hotmail.com
