Firearms History

The history of firearms began with the invention of gunpowder in China in the 9th century. This led to the development of devices that could fire the gunpowder with firearms being invented in the 12th century. The first firearm was a rudimentary design called the fire-lance. It was basically a long tube filled with gunpowder and thrown like a spear. It was used as a flamethrower and sometimes had pieces of shrapnel attached at the end of the tube that would fly out when the gunpowder exploded.

After a time, saltpeter was added to the gunpowder so that it would explode better and the throwing shafts were made of metal. Thus the basis of the firearm was born. The earliest firearm of this nature was discovered in the Acheng District of China. This was made of bronze and dates back to the 14th century.

The first instances of firearms used in battle in the Middle East was in 1260 in Egypt. These were hand cannons, which had a barrel length of 190 to 600 mm. Although they were crude weapons, they could still kill armored soldiers at a range of about 50 meters. The barrels were made of iron and cast in bronze and for ease of use they were attached to a wooden stock.

Torpedoes were invented in the Middle East in the 13th century as well. The drawings and illustrations of Hassan al-Rammah, a Syrian engineer, show the torpedo traveling through water. The term torpedo was not given to this device until the 1800’s when this type of firearm came to be used extensively.

Gunpowder and firearms made their way to Western Europe by way of the Silk Road and the traders. Small portable handguns were used in Europe in the early 1400’s. These were the first personal firearms. These evolved into the flintlock rifle and then the breech loader. To use a breech loader, the shooter had to pour loose gunpowder into the barrel of the gun, add a projectile, such as a lead ball, and then push both the projectile and the gunpowder into the barrel using a ramrod. This eventually led to the development of fixed ammunition in the form of a cartridge.

The repeater firearm could hold more than one cartridge and could be fired more than once before reloading. The earliest firearms of this kind were revolvers in which the shooter had to cock the hammer of the firearm before shooting.

Semi-automatics were the next development in the history of firearms. The ammunition is fed into the barrel from a clip holding the bullets. Automatic firearms, such as machine guns, did not appear until the late 1800’s with the invention of smokeless gunpowder.