Early firearms

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Gunpowder technology was already hundreds of years old by the time the British settled their colonies in North America. But the firearms of the mid-18th century were still fairly crude: heavy, cumbersome to load and fire, and wildly inaccurate over all but the shortest ranges. Colonial-era muskets featured a simple design: a trigger mechanism forced a steel hammer against a piece of flint, generating the sparks that ignited a charge of black powder, which exploded and propelled the ball down the barrel of the musket and out the muzzle.

Even a skilled gunsmith could not circumvent some of the fundamental flaws inherent in the design of the musket. The weapon was, by its nature, unreliable (flints wore out and functioned poorly in damp conditions), and clumsy to load (since the bullet had to be loaded at the muzzle). Loading a musket—tipping black powder into the pan and then helping the musket ball down the three-and-a-half-foot barrel with a ramrod—was a time-consuming process, and one that proved all but impossible while lying down. Because of the manipulations required to load the weapon, even an experienced soldier could only manage to fire three or four shots per minute.

In this video, re-enactor Bill Thompson explains late 18th-century small arms, including how a flintlock works and the differences between rifles and muskets, and demonstrates the loading and firing of an English “Brown Bess” musket.