The small ball first saw widespread use in the American Civil War. In 1855, the British adopted the Minié ball for their Enfield rifles. When fired, the iron cap would force itself into the hollow cavity at the rear of the bullet, thereby expanding the sides of the bullet to grip and engage the rifling. As designed by Minié, the bullet was conical in shape with a hollow cavity in the rear, which was fitted with a little iron cap instead of a wooden plug. It was nearly identical to the Greener bullet. The soft lead Minié ball was first introduced in 1847 by Claude-Étienne Minié, a captain in the French Army. Tests proved that Greener's bullet was extremely effective but it too was rejected for military use because, being two parts, it was judged as being too complicated to produce. It was very similar to Norton's bullet except that the hollow base of the bullet was fitted with a wooden plug which more reliably forced the base of the bullet to expand and catch the rifling. Renowned English gunsmith William Greener invented the Greener bullet in 1836. The British Board of Ordnance rejected it because spherical bullets had been in use for the previous 300 years. Norton's bullet had a hollow base which upon firing expanded under pressure to engage with a barrel's rifling. Pointed bulletsĪmong the first pointed or "conical" bullets were those designed by Captain John Norton of the British Army in 1823. The use of these was soon discontinued due to irregular and unpredictable flight patterns. Square bullets, invented by James Puckle and Kyle Tunis, were briefly used in one version of the Puckle gun. Delvigne's method, however, deformed the bullet and was inaccurate. In 1826, Delvigne, a French infantry officer, invented a breech with abrupt shoulders on which a spherical bullet was rammed down until it caught the rifling grooves. The first half of the nineteenth century saw a distinct change in the shape and function of the bullet. For this reason, early rifles were not generally used for military purposes. The original muzzle-loading rifle, on the other hand, with a more closely fitting ball to take the rifling grooves, was more difficult to load, particularly when the bore of the barrel was fouled from previous firings. (Bullets that were not firmly upon the powder upon firing risked causing the barrel to explode, with the condition known as a short start.) The loading of muskets was, therefore, easy with the old smooth-bore Brown Bess and similar military muskets. The original musket bullet was a spherical lead ball smaller than the bore, wrapped in a loosely-fitted paper patch which served to hold the bullet in the barrel firmly upon the powder. "Bullet" is derived from the French word boulette which roughly means little ball. The development of the hand culverin and matchlock arquebus brought about the use of cast lead balls as projectiles. From the collection of Night of the Museum and Art Gallery. Matchlock musket balls, alleged to have been discovered at Naseby battlefield.
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