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
~~The earliest repeating firearm was I believe the puckle gun made in the 18th century.~~ *Apparently not quite– there were flintlock repeaters as early as 1630. Then came the Gatling gun in the 19th. The biggest obstacle to making those more portable was most likely manufacturing tech, and they just couldn’t figure out a way to make them portable enough for a single person to carry and wield.
But what held firearms back for the longest time in general was setting up the shot: you needed powder, the projectile, a way to spark it, keep it all under pressure so it actually went bang instead of just burning ineffectively, and strong enough not to explode and hurt the soldier. Once we figured out how to do that with metallic cartridges which could be stored in magazines and manipulated by mechanisms inside the gun, machine guns followed shortly after.
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