Kalthoff 30-Shot Flintlock: The First Repeating Firearm Used in War (1659)
The first repeating rifle used in combat by a military force was a flintlock system developed by the Kalthoff brothers. It was adopted in the 1640s by the Danish Royal Guard, who purchased a bit more than 100 of the guns, and used them successfully in the Siege of Copenhagen in 1659. The Kalthoff is a .54 caliber flintlock rifle with a magazine of 30 balls under the barrel and a powder storage compartment in the buttstock. A lever under the action is rotated forward 180 degrees and then back to completely reload the rifle – this action loads a ball into the chamber, seats it fully in place, loads powder behind it, primes the pan, cocks the hammer, and closes the frizzen. This was an amazing amount of firepower in the mid-1600s, and the mechanism in the gun is brilliant.
The Kalthoff brothers (Peter, Mathias, Caspar, Henrik, and William) spread out across Europe working for many royal courts although it was in Denmark where their gun saw the most substantial military use. The system would lead to other repeating flintlock designs like the Lorenzoni, but these did not really meet the quality of the original Kalthoffs (in my opinion). However, the system was very expensive to make and rather fragile to use. By 1696 the Danes had taken them out of service in favor of simpler and more durable designs.
Must have been a bit dicey to hold a wooden stock full of several charges worth of powder next to your face while firing it. Any hot gas blowback and that bad boy is a frag grenade.
Watch the video. The powder charge used in every shot is carried by a small chamber in the rotating guard. The powder reserve is completely disconnected from any part of the firing mechanism.
It's interesting that we have examples like this but yet some people claim that the founders of the United States never could have imagined the firepower of semi automatic firearms that are protected by the 2nd Amendment today
While revolutionary at the time, thris is still more in line with a bolt action than a semi auto. And other than some potential rich collectors these would have been in the hands of the military, not civilians due to their cost and complexity. Notice that they also switched back due to their lack of reliability. These clearly didn't work quite as well as people hoped.
That's fair. Even if the design wasn't entirely reliable you could see the potential of future designs.
Civilians have always been near the cutting edge of firearms stuff. In the civil war the Henry rifle was bought by soldiers to great effect. These days even budget ARs have free floated handguards with m lok attachment points, compared to the proven but dated design of M4A1s that most conventional forces use. We can do the experimentation that the military can't afford to do at scale.
It can be. They had electric vehicles in mines in the 30s and a few decades later here we are. The problem was the power source. Those vehicles were run with ridiculously long extension cords.
For guns the capacity was there, the problem was managing powder, caps and bullets. Cartridges came around and rapid fire was now easily achievable