What stopped 18-19th century armies with guns from being able to create automatic weapons like AK-47s and Uzis?
Since they don’t use electricity I feel like they’re made with materials and technology that was already available in the 1750s, surely they could’ve put their heads together to create a machine gun and just annihilate any ops…
Thanks
In: Engineering
Machine guns were made possible by a whole series of inventions, and weren’t really possible before that.
One of the most essential inventions was the cartridge. Propellant, a primer, a projectile, all the components contained in a single case. This was a key to having any sort of repeating fire, but wasn’t patented until 1847 and wasn’t widely available for years after that.
While gunmakers quickly figured out how to manually feed cartridges with a bolt/pump/lever, using the power from a round was tricky, because the black powder in use at the time was very dirty. It left behind thick and hard fouling in the gun, enough to gunk up the works after a few rounds and stop them from working.
This is the point machine guns became possible and were invented, but, they weren’t really reliable. The only real way around the fouling issue was to overcome it with sheer force, leading to weapons that were large and heavy like the 1884 Maxim gun.
Smokeless powder was invented in 1884, wasn’t really commercially available until about 1897, but basically solved the fouling issue. This made machine guns viable, and it’s why tons started being invented in the early 20th century.
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