Why did it take like 500 years to develop a self contained cartridge...

This gun made in the 1540s is precisely what I'm referencing, but they had breech loading cannons with prepared blocks that served as self-contained loads at least 50 years before that.

Attached: RP,Hinterlader,~1545.1 kl.jpg (920x597, 177K)

You can quit any time you want right?

That is fucking sexy. Why cant guns look like this now?

youtube.com/watch?v=beOgmCxeh7A

A muzzle loader is a tube with a badly sealed end. You're going to need to go pretty barebones to top it's simplicity. Self-contained cartridges rifles are much more complex than a simple musket.

Somebody first had to perfect rifling inside the barrel of a firearm. Then somebody had to make gunpowder to foul less.

It took 500 years for manufacturing capability to mature sufficiently to make self-contained cartridges viable. Not "to be developed" but "to be viable." They had been a thing for most of that 500 years but it wasn't until they could be reliably mass-produced that they became practical rather than a one-off toy for the ultra-wealthy.

>Innovation takes initiative.
No, it takes time. Technological advancement isn't linear you retard.

Pretty sure they had paper or cloth "cartridges" pretty early on

A better question might be why hasn't small arms technology progressed in the same manner as aircraft or submarines? In the time span from open cockpit propeller planes to supersonic jets, the two more popular handgun designs are revolvers and John M. Browning's 1911. While the AK, the Glock, and the Stoner weapons system designs certainly forced changes in small arms manufacturing, it was nothing so radical as seen in aircraft and other implements of war.

i made a thread asking the same question not a year ago
but, then i took a look back and i asked another question
What are we missing today? What is taking us too long to develop that would make perfect sense?

>Seems so simple compared to how a muzzle loader operates
then you really havent thought about it much. you're talking 19th century machine tools, and a cartridge needs to be consistently made to tight tolerances.
do you even know what happens when you pull the trigger?
the firing pin hits the primer
the primer sets off a chemical reaction that ignites the powder
the case swells due to the explosion that just happened inside it
case cant be too small, otherwise the case ruptures
cant be too big, otherwise it wouldnt chamber in the first place, or wont extract in the second.
then after the boolit gets expelled from the case, the pressure relieves, and the case can contract so it can be extracted
why dont you try making something on 18th century tooling with tolerances of +-.001"
now make a box of 1000 of them like that.
fuck i hate kids today

>fuck i hate kids today
You seem abnormally crabby about nothing, sir. Have you had a satisfying bowel movement lately? Perhaps you're in need of a fecal transplant. I'm sure there's a couple of Jow Forumsummandos who'd be willing to help you out with that.

The muzzle loader is a fine old girl.
You don't fix what isn't broken.

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Guns are done in terms of development. The only time you see innovation is due to changes in military doctrine or civilian gun laws.

>The muzzle loader is a fine old girl.
>You don't fix what isn't broken.

Go join some small arms militia-type firefight
with a muzzle loader somewhere where both sides are armed with AKs, ARs, and FNs. Let me know how that works out for you.

>Guns are done in terms of development.

Great answer, Poindexter.

>Why did it take like 500 years to develop a self contained cartridge?

You're not getting laser guns any time soon, stay mad.

>diluted HMX propellant
>plasma flash board laser diode primer
>polymer CT case
>flow formed barrels
>3d printed suppressors
>smart scopes
>M855A1 part II

There's room for improvement, user.

Because modern guns don't need as much material and their internal mechanisms are more efficient. I'm sure you could still fit the equipment into a more aesthetic package but at that point you're altering the structure of the weapon simply for aesthetics sake which at least IMO is going too far. A gun like any tool should be functional first and aesthetic second. Besides functionality is it's own beauty.

>>Why did it take like 500 years to develop a self contained cartridge?

>Hurr, Why did it take niggers a hundred thousand years to invent rap?

>You're not getting laser guns any time soon, stay mad.

Stay gay, fag. I want a concealable plasma pistol. Lasers are fucking gay as you.

Ding ding ding. Engineering needed to catch up. Hell, God only knows how many rifles failed probably due to inconsistent ammo and barrel sizes.

Even then, automated manufacturing didn't exist yet. Can you imagine how much time it would take to make all the shit and put it together?

>Were people back then too lazy just smoking hemp all day to innovate?
See

Smokeless powder and improved metallurgy ya fuckin' poofter.

fuck you talking about, nigger?

I answered OP's question, I wasn't saying that muzzle loaders are viable in combat today, nor whatever you were trying to imply in your second post.

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>t. Austrians as they were mown down in Konnigratz.

>I answered OP's question, I wasn't saying that muzzle loaders are viable in combat today, nor whatever you were trying to imply in your second post.

Oh, I see. You're an inarticulate spergy who lacks communication skills. Carry on.

You're right in the sense from invention-to-invention. But it is broadly linear. In some video games it's possible to skip huge pieces of the tech tree for very long periods of the time, like in Civilization V. That's not really possible in the real world. If it's 'possible' for something to exist then it will be done very soon. We don't leave gaps, at least not since globalization. The last time large technology asymmetry existed within civilized societies was probably Japan after contacting the West. Or in Africa, because of the technology that gets imported.

Alright.

Attached: Battle_of_the_Wilderness.png (1724x1246, 3.81M)

You're close, but no cigar. The key to innovation is communication. The basic foundations of modern science were developed within 100 years of the Gutenberg Press. One person working on a problem might never solve it. Thousands might. Billions should. Every paradigmatic shift in technology was always prefaced by a jump in communication and the ability to propagate information.

>Look at the technology jump from the Civil War to WWII, inside of 80 something years. Literally horses to nukes.
Shit starts moving fast when America happens.

primers
there's your answer. google "pinfire" faggot

Here's my understanding of the history after some research.

First, cartridges requires a primer. Primers are made with primary explosives that react to heat, light, etc, but most importantly to mechanical shock.
The first one of these that could be reliably produced, handled, stored, and used was mercury(II) fulminate, Hg(CNO)2, first synthesized in 1800 by Edward Charles Howard.

In 1805 a man named Reverend Alexander Forsyth mixed this with potassium chlorate (KClO3), creating the first primer. He patented it.
The problem is that he miserably failed to produce and use it in a practical way, yet sued the shit out of all of his competitors when they tried.
So everyone had to wait until his patent expired in 1921.
After that a variety of inventors like Shaw, Manton, etc went about selling percussion cap guns, basically an incremental improvement on the flintlock system with a primer cap as the ignition mechanism.

Meanwhile in France, gunsmiths quickly realized you could use the new primers to make an integrated cartridge. Jean Samuel Pauly even built one and a needle-gun to fire it by around 1810.
The problem was sealing the chamber, keeping the gas going forward and pushing the bullet out of the barrel instead of escaping backwards.
This was solved by making a copper casing thin and malleable enough to deform outwards and block the breech.
Casimir Lefaucheux was the first to put that into practice in 1836 with the "pinfire" cartridge.
In 1846 his fellow Frenchman Benjamin Houllier took this to the next level by also sealing the entire cartridge itself in a full copper case designed to hold everything, deform right, block almost all gas escape, and also not explode under pressure. He patented both rimfire and centerfire versions.

[1/2]

[2/2]

Meanwhile in the US, a guy working for Colt named Rollin White saw this and took out a patent for drilling revolver cylinders all the way through (to take cartridges) around the mid-1850s. However, he didn't manage to convince Samuel Colt to build any. So he left and joined a couple guys named Smith and Wesson who were also very interested in the cartridge idea, and they started a company and built some revolvers.
Upon seeing them Colt immediately realized their mistake (and so did everyone else) but they couldn't do shit until White's patent expired in 1870.

At that point pretty much everyone knew cartridges were the future.
Boxer and Berdan came up with their primers in 1866, the Colt Single-Action Army came out in 1873, etc.

So to answer OP's question: This user is right, it's the primers.
A suitable primer was only developed around 1800.
After that it only took 10 years for a guy to turn it into a cartridge and gun (Pauly).
And only 30 more to work out the practical problems (Lefaucheux and Houllier).
And another 30 to accept and mass-produce it (Enfield and Colt).

Moore's Law
Technology doubles every 18 months.

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That's not Moore's law goofball

Because barring tremendous improvement in what we make the guns out of that lets you use a true high explosive to propel the projectile (HAHAHAHA) or a novel propellant that allows for more velocity without destroying the gun, firearms ave gone about as far as they can go. Even if you could, would you want to? Your shoulder can only take so much. Improved sighting systems and projectiles is about as good as it gets at this point.

Swedging the brass is actually kind of a pain in the ass to do effectively. Need hardened steel tooling and precision machining, which is difficult to mass produce.

Transistor count doubles every 18 months, and it's basically over. Now it's about reducing energy and cost.

What about quantum computing?

I think you're missing the point. Nobody smokes hemp.

what about it? it has nothing to do with moore's law and while qubit counts are improving, it has no near or mid term consumer level use.

I feel like you had this conversion before and made you really upset.

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Weren't cartridges used near the end of the Civil War?

the rich had paper cartriges for a long long time

For about 30-40 years before even.
If you count pre loaded chambers then for about 500 years before.

Neat.
I'll have to read up more about it then.

Niggers are lazy.

It did not. If we are starting from the develop of the matchlock (~1464) it took about 70 years. The oldest dated gun to use cartridges is from 1537 and was the bird hunting gun of Henry the VIII of England. Not to say it was the first but it is the oldest that has been dated. I will say that it is a reusable cartridge rather then what you may be thinking of.

Truth is that it and a lot of firarms tech is older then used to though. It a matter of very bad tech history books and a inability to keep costs under control. Did know that before the 1880s we believed that the handgonne was post or late Yuan era invention? Made to fight off the Mongol empire... Turns out that it was made to fight the Mongols but it was done so before their rise to power. Most likely around 1190 to 1193 in Northwest china.

youtube.com/watch?v=beOgmCxeh7A

Before steam powered press's I do not think that single use self contained cartridges would really be economically viable.

harquebus circa 1490s

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this is the real answer.

mass production was absolutely vital, one of the good things that muskets had was that such large calibers left room for error when casting the balls.

There was this really good documentary about Medieval times and part of it was focusing on the weapons of that era.
youtube.com/watch?v=1gE0BH66QRw
I recommend the whole thing, but at 1hr 22min in, the host looks at a 15th century style gun. It really is impressive how quickly they can fire it, providing they have someone there reloading each breech block. You're probably not going to single out individuals with that kind of gun, but firing it into a formation of enemy soldiers would have a pretty big impact both physically and psychologically.

mass production and machinery, I would think. I mean it got pretty damn easy once we went full industrial revolution.

>they probably wouldn't have been very popular due to it being super expensive
Pretty much this
Rack and Pinion has been around longer than even rifled muskets.
And yet it is not widely used because
1) the pre-industrial manufacturing process for them resulted in numerous defects and the guns were substandard at best.
It was all manual labour with zero automation and QC is non-existent, let alone standardisation.

2) They were wildly expensive due to the hugely demanding and time-intensive process and few gunsmiths are competent enough to
make one, let alone fill a whole arsenal as the tolerances were low compared to handcannons, arquebuses, muskets, lever-action and
even the revolver. As a result, even the richest Kings can only afford to equip but one elite regiment with Rack N' Pinions.

Self-contained cartridges were the end-result of technology/machinery/technical know-how catching up to the point where mass production of said cartridges was
made possible. Like everything else in history, it is the product of our times.

Innovation takes a large, educated, idle class that has the free time to think "What if.... " And the technical know-how to follow that rabbit hole to wherever it goes, even if 90% of them are blind alleys that yield nothing.

In the lase 100 years we've gone from steam engines to the cobalt bomb and the beginnings of cybernetics. It took the 30,000 years before that to achieve the social conditions necessary to ramp up to the scientific knowledge and technological know-how to make that possible

>Homo sapiens have only been around about 150K or 200K years.

And everything modern man accomplished was done in the last 10,000 years of that time frame. It took us a hot minute to finally start figuring things out.

Shit starts moving fast when electricity happened bro

Yea, doubling every 2 years is over cause now its even greater than that. It hasnt slowed down at all. Get learned tardo

Actually, commercially available quantum computers are much closer than you think. I have a feeling you live under a rock

>plasma flash board laser diode primer What is that and what is the advantages? >flow formed barrels What are the advantages for that?

Aw shoot I messed up the green text. I blame the phone

>zero firearm developments
>accessories and ammo lul

Very nice, but these are more exceptions than the rule, because these things were astronomically expensive and complex for their time, where as the average musket could be slapped together in a dude's workshop in about a week and only cost the army a few bob.

Also, great b8. The basic concept of guns was finished around 1580 or so (propell a small bit of metal at extreme velocity), but just because the basic concept hasn't advanced doesn't mean innovation is finished. That's like saying cars are done because anything beyond four wheels, a motor and a seat is just accessories.

>Look at the technology jump from the Civil War to WWII, inside of 80 something years. Literally horses to nukes.
It's not like there was the most extensive technological revolution in history happening at the time, you fuckin dope. How the fuck do people know so little about history?

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Retard.

>Dwave on my gpu any day now boys

No, u. Optimizing design algos is cool for big companies and a few researchers, but it has no personal effect in the near term.

anyone have a webm of GW running down communists? I saw it the other day and foolishly didn't save it. it was kekworthy.

Modern firearm cartridges really are an assembly of completely different technologies. For starters, they had to be consistent in size and charge, if they were to load and extract reliably. This requires substantial knowledge of metallurgy and machining on every cartridge that goes out of the factory, not to mention interchangeable parts between the firearms loading those cartridges. You needed breechloaders with good enough gas seals to not explode, which required advances in metallurgy and design. They needed a reliable primer that wouldn't ignite prematurely, which took until modern chemistry and industrial production to do right. Finally, while single-shot blackpowder breechloaders were well faster than their muzzleloading contemporaries, the big change that double the capability of firearms overnight was smokeless powder, an achievement of modern chemistry which allowed higher, flatter-shooting velocities and and greatly reduced fouling, allowing a higher sustainable rate-of-fire.

I think the better comparison would be "gatling guns" to nukes, since gatling guns were state-of-the-art then in the same way that nukes were state-of-the-art in WW2. It'd be like saying the difference between 2018 and 2019 is pottery and hypersonic missiles because people still use pottery in 2018.