![]() ![]() These repeating weapons were explicitly for “making havoc of the human species.” Image: Description of a machine invented by Colonel Chambers of Pennsylvania, circa 1815, War of 1812 mss., Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. The gun’s normal trigger would be reserved for a bullet remaining at the rear of the chamber. A perforated protrusion in the cylindrical-shaped bullet would carry the charge down the barrel and fire the second bullet, and so on. ![]() That lock, triggered by a cord, would ignite the first powder charge, thus firing the first projectile. #Types of guns in 1791 full#In a letter to Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Chambers explained that his project really deserved the “Attention of public men” despite the fact that by firing 20 bullets out of a common musket “some have bursted.” Now he hoped that Jefferson could help him communicate his plan to the “Friends of Liberty and the Rights of men in Europe.” Chambers explained to Jefferson that through his loading design he could “charge a Gun barrel full from one end to the other and upon occasion to fire these off successively at any desired intervals.” The loading design (identified in a British intelligence report dating from the aftermath of the War of 1812, shown below) required a lock affixed to the front of the gun barrel. The demonstration for the War Department was apparently a failure. Given the Congressional report, Henry Knox was presumably eager to entertain ordnance solutions to the problem of western expansion, so when Chambers informed Knox about his invention, the Secretary of War quickly ordered a subordinate to supply the inventor with a musket, and organized a demonstration at Alexander Hamilton’s “Seat” on the Schuylkill. Army had suffered a disastrous defeat as it marched on native villages, and Congress soon blamed the setback on the quality of the weapons issued to the troops. The unreliability of Chambers’ technology was apparent from the time he approached the War Department in the spring of 1792 with the promise of repeating arms. ![]() Yet, the promise of rapid-fire arms was not taken for granted, nor did those who encountered it ascribe a quasi-mythical “American” quality to the nascent technology - often the case in today’s political culture. Chambers’ repeating guns stood at the nexus of diplomacy and technological advancement in the Age of Revolutions. By the early 1820s, however, the complexity, and inherent danger of the firing mechanism led to their wholesale abandonment. Navy and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania during the War of 1812, and were much sought after by European powers. Although Chambers failed to gain patronage from interested parties in the early 1790s, his weapons (repeating muskets, pistols, and seven-barreled swivel guns) were adopted by the U.S. War Department with a musket that could, he claimed, fire 20 rounds in a minute. In May 1792, Joseph Gaston Chambers almost revolutionized world history when he approached the U.S. ![]()
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