(Minié is properly pronounced min-YAY, but Americans pronounced the name as “Minnie.”) At the time, French troops were facing Algerians whose long rifles outranged French muskets, and the invention of Minié offered a solution to that problem. Delvigne, who would go on to codesign several models of revolving pistols, had earlier created a conical bullet design, but Minié made the projectile smaller and longer, easier to load. The design of Norton and Greener was taken a step further by two French army captains, Claude-Étienne Minié and Henri-Gustave Delvigne, who in 1849 created the conical, soft-lead bullet with four rings, and a rifle with a grooved barrel to go with it. (The Illustrated London News, March 1855) Claude-Étienne Minié, Inventor of the Minié Ball Perhaps that is why Britain’s Ordinance Department rejected the new ammunition, despite a successful test by the 60th Rifles in August 1836. Upon firing, the plug would expand to prevent gases from escaping-essentially the same principle as the blowgun dart.Īn old saying holds that militaries are always preparing to fight the previous war i.e., they tend to be hidebound in sticking with proven tactics and technologies instead of looking ahead.
This hole traveled through most of the length of the bullet and was covered by a conical plug with a round, wooden base. His design was improved on in 1836 by a London gunsmith named William Greener, who created an oval-shaped bullet, one end of which had a flat surface with a small hole drilled into it. This pith expanded when a person blew into the blowgun’s tube, closing the space between the tube and the dart to give a tight seal that increased the dart’s range.īased on this principle, Norton developed a cylindrical bullet with a hollow base in 1832. Some local tribes used blowguns, and Norton observed the base of their darts was made from pith, the spongy wood from the center of tree trunks. In the 1830s, Captain John Norton of the British 34th Regiment was serving in India. Some muskets were created with a type of rifling, but the problem of providing a tight enough fit for the load within the barrel did not permit the true rifling that would come as a result of the Minié ball. They were cumbersome, slow to load, and couldn’t be used with a bayonet, all of which limited their use to a few special units. Prior to the development of this new ammunition and weapons designed to use it, “rifles” were essentially smoothbore muskets with much longer barrels, such as the famed Pennsylvania or Kentucky rifle of the Revolutionary War and War of 1812. How These Elite Civil War Marksmen Changed the Face of Warfare Some recent historians, however, question that because accuracy also depends on the soldier who pulls the trigger, and throughout the Civil War (when target practice was minimal), the combatants tended to aim too high. Its design dramatically increased both range and accuracy, which has long been accepted as the reason for the high number of casualties in the Civil War. When fired, the expanding gas deformed the bullet and engaged the barrel’s rifling, providing spin for better accuracy and longer range. Designed with two to four grooves and a cone-shaped cavity, it was made to expand under the pressure to increase muzzle velocity.
Made of soft lead, it was slightly smaller than the intended gun bore, making it easy to load in combat. The muzzle-loading rifle bullet was named after its codeveloper, Claude-Étienne Minié.Īlthough the Minié ball was conical in shape, it was commonly referred to as a “ball,” due to the round shape of the ammunition that had been used for centuries. The Minié ball, or Minie ball, is a type of bullet used extensively in the American Civil War. When completed, it exhibits concepts relating to the laws of motion and delivers hours of entertainment.Minie Ball: The Civil War Bullet that Changed History | HistoryNet Close It employs precision gears to power a platform in a “see-saw” pattern that propels a rolling ball. The kit uses the principles of gravity and kinetics to measure the passage of time. The Da Vinci Rolling Ball Timer is based on a sketch of an escapement mechanism drawn by Leonardo da Vinci. Based on the manuscripts, the DIY kits allow us to learn the parts of each machine and principles of motion.īuild your own replicas of the classic inventions based on Da Vinci’s original manuscriptsĭelicate box package which you could keep it as a valuable collection Some of them have been invented, but some were not possible at that time, thus, he left these manuscripts and hoped that people could improve them to create something better in the future. Up to now, many manuscripts left from Da Vinci have been found.
Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath who was interested in invention, architecture, science, and engineering.