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Keep it together, soldier!
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2026
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Fun fact. Rifling wasn't invented until right before the Civil War. That spiraling in a gun barrel helps the bullet keep aim and hit the target. Before that the balls just bounced out of the musket any old way.
That is one of the reasons the Civil War was so bloody. The armies still lined up, but this time the rifles shot straight.
Wat. Rifling dates to the 16th Century. It was just prohibitively expensive before the mid-1800s so most troops were equipped with smoothbore muskets.
No? Rifling was around muuuch longer than that, but was primarily for specialized divisions (the Kentucky Long Rifle being a notable example). It was becoming more commonly issued at the outset, but at the time, smoothbore muskets were still pretty widely issued due in part to vast stockpiles and sudden need.
I'm not sure what you're No-ing. Rifling was around longer but the Civil War introduced it as a standard.
https://historymaking.org/textbook/items/show/275
My bad, I took this bit to be saying that rifling was new to the scene, rather than new to industrial-scale manufacture.
Oh yeah. My bad. I guess I said that wrong. There were more advances in the rounds that made the rifling better, but I was trying to simplify it.
I was interested in the Civil War cause the weapons advanced faster than the way we fight wars. You wouldn't see people lining up and walking toward another army now.