ABSTRACT
The history of firearms is long and complicated, encompassing innovations and developments in ammunition: from crude black powder muzzle loaders to modern brass-cased, centerfire cartridges using smokeless propellant, in ignition systems; from a glowing twig touching gunpowder through a simple flash hole in the barrel to a firing pin which strikes and crushes the priming mixture thereby “instantly” igniting the propellant charge, in mechanical developments; from the simple metal tube attached to a stick to the finely machined high technology firearms which are capable of operating from single shot to fully automatic fire, in metallurgy; from crude iron, which withstood the pressure of the weak early powders, to high tensile metals that can withstand pressures in the tens of thousands of pounds per square inch. The history of ammunition closely parallels the history of firearms as one is designed to accommodate the other.
