Today, the assumptions about "what would have happened" have become very popular and it is not surprising that even science is engaged in them. Why? Because there are such bifurcation points in history - “points of instability”, when all the enormous inertia of the economy and the psychology of the masses ceases to play the dominant significance usual for the course of history. That is, changes can be made, let's say, "with a light push!"
Miniature from a 1326 manuscript by Walter de Milimet. British Library.
Examples? Yes, as much as necessary!
It is known, for example, that a certain nobile, who wanted to change the policy of Venice, conspired against the Doge and, dressed in full knightly armor, went with his comrades to kill him at the gallery. The galley moored near the Doge's Palace, a gangway was thrown to the shore, he went along it and … the gangway of the weight of knightly armor could not bear it and broke, and he himself flew into the water and instantly drowned. Panic has begun among the conspirators! There was no other gangway, no one dared to take matters into their own hands, and then from the shore, suspecting something was wrong, the halberdiers of their guard ran up. It all ended with the conspirators returning back, quickly fled and immediately went to repent and betray each other. And the reason for the failure was just a rotten board!
And here is another example related to the attempt on V. I. Lenin. Six officers of the tsarist army created the so-called "Hunting Brigade" and began to "hunt" him. The opportunity presented itself to them on January 1, 1918, when Lenin was supposed to speak at the seeing off of volunteers in the Mikhailovsky arena. It was decided to attack on the bridge over the Fontanka, and to prevent the "case" from breaking, signalmen were placed from the Manezh to the bridge. After the meeting, Lenin got into the car with his guards and drove straight to the bridge. And that's where it all started. For some reason, the officers did not manage to throw the bomb, and they started shooting at the car. The engine stalled, the car or "engine", as they said then, stopped, and this made it possible for one of the officers to run up close to him and shoot at point-blank range! What do you think he hit anyone? Neither did he hit Lenin, nor did he hit the guard who had overshadowed him. And then the driver managed to start the engine and took his "car" into the alley, although his body was shot in several places. It is interesting that all these officers were immediately caught, tried and sentenced to death. But since the Germans at that time broke through our front near Narva and Pskov, Lenin pardoned them, on the condition that they go to fight the Germans, to which, of course, they gladly agreed!
There are a lot of similar examples in history, but we are now talking about technology, where, in general, there are also enough of them.
Reconstruction of Walter de Milimet's "cannon" at the Royal Arsenal in Leeds.
Here, for example, is an old English miniature from a 1326 manuscript by Walter de Milimet, which was taught to King Edward III. On it we see an old weapon, loaded not with a cannonball, but with a feathered arrow! That is, it is, in fact, an analogue of bricoli, only with a powder drive. Now let's look at a crossbow from around the same time. Its design was quite perfect, it had a trigger. But … how did the charges of the first hand-held powder guns ignite? With the help of a hot rod, which was stuck into the ignition hole by the assistant "gunner". Then, however, the rod was replaced with a wick, but the mechanism that "brought" the burning wick to the fuse did not appear immediately, although the "nut" of the crossbow was in front of everyone's eyes! When the trigger was pressed, the thrust, overcoming the resistance of the spring, lowered the trigger with a smoldering wick onto the ignition hole, into which the gunpowder was poured. Interestingly, the Japanese had the trigger moving away from themselves, and the Europeans - towards themselves!
Crossbow XVI century. with the "Nuremberg gate".
And what about the bullets? They began to be cast very quickly from lead (although they preferred to shoot stone cannonballs from cannons!), Although this was very dangerous, first of all, for the shooters themselves. The fact is that at that time it was already known that lead is poisonous and it was believed that the wounds inflicted by lead bullets were therefore inflamed. The fact that they were inflamed from the dirt, then simply no one knew. But on the other hand, the doctors recommended that the wounds inflicted with lead be either cauterized with a red-hot iron, or poured with boiling oil (!) - "pleasure" is clearly not a pleasant one, so they cut off their hands for this!
However, look, people for some reason did not think of the obvious: to pass an arrow with a metal plumage through a round or cylindrical-conical lead bullet. After all, the Romans had similar darts - plumbats, and in this case it was only necessary to reduce their size. Such a feathered bullet would fly more accurately, and its penetrating power would be much greater! And most importantly - after all, they were shooting arrows from a primitive gunpowder weapon, but none of our ancestors thought to make a "leading lead belt" on them, although ball bullets wrapped in a cloth and resembling a shuttlecock for badminton in flight are known! And now I wonder how progress would have gone, first of all, in hand-held firearms, if such arrow-bullets had been adopted even then? It is clear that they would be technologically more complex and expensive, but their efficiency would be much higher.
Now let's get back to the ignition mechanism. Everyone knows that soon after the widespread use of matchlock firearms, the so-called wheel lock appeared, invented in Germany or Austria in the first quarter of the 16th century. At about the same time (c. 1525), the "snephons" appeared - an impact lock with flint and flint, which ignited the charge not as a result of the rotation of a cogwheel, but with a sharp and short impact. Locks of this type have spread all over the world, but … at the same time with them, the so-called grating locks appeared, which, however, "did not go". Structurally, they had an ignition hole not on the side of the barrel, but behind it. There was also a "grater" like a file, along which the flint moved backward by the force of a spring and gave a powerful sheaf of sparks that beat forward and fell on the powder in the ignition hole. It turned out to be unsuccessful, first of all, because the flint in it went back, that is, the sparks had to overcome a greater distance than in the shock lock, and in flight they "cooled down"!
Fig. # 1
However, at about the same time, namely in the 17th - 18th centuries, projects of sliding-type flint-type rifle locks appeared. Look at picture # 1. The shutter device is shown on it quite clearly and it cannot be said that it was too complicated. It is a rod inside a coil spring. There are two handles on the sides, you can cock the shutter with both your left and right hand. At the end of the rod there are "sponges" for flint and … that's it! At the rear of the barrel there is a lug with an ignition hole and a protrusion that acts as a firewood. Moreover, the ignition hole is closed with a lid on top, which is very convenient! When loading such a weapon, all operations associated with gunpowder and a bullet are similar to weapons with a percussion flintlock. Before this, the shutter was pulled back and held by the trigger. When the last bolt was pressed, it went forward, hitting the protrusion of the ignition hole with a flint. At the same time, its lid opened, and a sheaf of sparks fell on the gunpowder located there and a shot took place.
Figure 2 shows almost the same design, but only in it the shutter is cocked by pulling back a special lever back, and it was located in front of the trigger. After all, it is obvious that a very powerful spring is simply not required to drive such a mechanism, and, thus, it could well be cocked with just one finger!
Rice. # 2
It is interesting that both of these systems were manufactured and tested, as Jaroslav Lugz informs us in his book "Handfeuerwaffen" (1982), but for some reason never got widespread. What prevented? It is difficult to say purely technical difficulties, for example, associated with the manufacture of coiled springs or was it just the inertia of thinking. In any case, it’s interesting to imagine what it would be like if they “went”. Logic dictates that the path to loading rifles from the treasury and to the creation of unitary cartridges in this case would be much shorter. But is it really so, we, of course, will never know now!
Rice. A. Shepsa
