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 1700s didn’t even have cased cartridges in widespread use. How can you have a machine gun that has to have the powder, wadding, bullet, and cap loaded separately like a musket?
Before 1886 all guns used black powder. Black powder is very very dirty, it will cause guns to jam up after only a dozen rounds or so, making it impossible to use reliably in an automatic gun. People did try, the Maxim gun originally used black powder, but it would always cause jamming issues. After 1886, smokeless powder was invented, smokeless powder is much cleaner and allows guns to shoot much much longer before jamming. Smokeless powder also comes with the added benefit of being much more powerful than black powder. After the invention of smokeless powder, automatic guns actually became possible, and because of that you see their popularity explode from 1890 onwards.
Edit: Just want to add that the first gun to use smokeless powder was the 1886 Lebel. There were other important inventions before then too, like the self contained cartridge and developments in spring manufacturing. Smokeless powder is really the final and most important invention that finally made automatic guns possible.
Assembly line and interchangeable parts is what made it not possible. Back in the 18th and early 19th this was not around and was just beginning to be a thing in the Industrial Revolution. Machining assembly lines for this like gun parts did’t start until the late 19th century, and interchangeable parts were not common until Henry Ford.
You want to look up the Henry or Spencer repeating rifle. These are the first cartridge fed rifles That saw wide spread use.
the limiting factor is *mass production*. You need to be able to reliably and repeatably produce parts and pieces faster than workers. That also means getting into the bowels of the Industrial Revolution, and that means having power sources that are reliable and extendedable. This starts with water wheels, and then gets into steam power.
There were several extremely important innovations in chemistry that hadn’t happened yet.
In the 1750’s the gun powder was ignited by a piece of flint hitting a metal pan.
In the early 1800s the percussion cap was invented. Now the hammer of a gun hits a bit of sensitive chemicals and those chemicals explode igniting the gun powder.
Within a couple decades, the self contained cartridge had been invented. It was a bullet, gun powder and a percussion cap all wrapped up in paper. You would place the cartridge in the rifle, and when you fired, a needle would pierce through the paper and hit the percussion cap.
The next innovation was metallic cartridges. These were significantly stronger than paper cartridges and you could do things like cram a bunch of them in a magazine without them breaking or deforming like paper would.
Not long after metallic cartridges were invented, the early proto-machine guns started being built. None of them were really practical though because the ammo they were using produced a ton of soot. They would quickly get all gunked up and stop working reliably until you cleaned them.
Once “smokeless” powder was invented, they could fire for far longer without the system getting too dirty. Smokeless powder was invented in 1884, and by 1886 the first Maxim guns were being adopted by the British Army.
From then on, it was just an iterative process of figuring out how to make things smaller and lighter (while still remaining strong) until they were small enough for soldiers to run around with them.
All guns are one malfunction away from being an improvised explosive device. Automatic weapons are at a higher risk because they tend to get very hot very quickly.
You need consistent quality in the material and construction of both the gun and the ammunition to minimize catastrophic malfunction.
Just about anyone could go down to the hardware store and jury rig a gatling gun with time and tools. The chances of it blowing up in their face (literally) is significant.
Even modern firearms malfunction and blow up. With modern designs and materials it’s rare, but it happens. I’ve seen a few interesting malfunctions over the past few decades first hand.
The most ‘common’ ones were from people that reloaded their own ammo. After that it was using old/improperly stored ammo. Weapon malfunction covered the rest.
Firearms had existed since the 13th century, and were imported to Europe in the 14th. (You can argue before in both cases, it depends on your definition of what a firearm is)
These were limited primarily by the poor metallurgy of the time, lack of precision machining to make consistent bullets and barrels, and the fact that you had to load the bullet, powder, and wadding separately.
Cartridges is the real answer.
As soon as the technology existed to make cartridges with the bullet and powder encased together, fully automatic weapons weren’t that far behind.
The technology and precision machining needed to make both are hand-in-hand.
You’re missing a few things in 1750.
First, mechanical precision. The kind of machining needed to repeatedly make weapons that work well without jamming required innovations that would come later in the Industrial Revolution.
Next, cartridges. Automatic weapons load premade cases with consistent dimensions. You can get away with a lot more variation in cartridges in muzzle loaders, cranked guns or lever guns than an automatic loading system. You do see weapons like that in the 19th century before brass cartridges. Those cartridges wouldn’t be perfected until the mid 19th century.
Finally, the powder available. Black powder fouls guns very rapidly to the point that ~~musketeers would be equipped with a set of shot that got smaller each shot~~ musket balls were made smaller than the barrel to ensure soldiers could quickly get it down the barrel. Automatic weapons usually capture some of the explosive gases to work the mechanism and these fine, thin tubes would be fouled almost immediately by black powder. Smokeless powders would only be developed in the late 19th century.
Edit: correcting per /u/BoingBoingBooty
Because people in the old days were more loving, gentle, and kind-hearted. Everybody just wanted peace and love until John Browning came along and singlehandedly ruined the world.
Lack of precision manufacturing at scale basically. A common blacksmith couldn’t make one but a watchmaker probably could. But those are highly specialized and would have to produce both the firearms and the ammunition. Cased ammunition alone took a long time (relative to firearms) to be developed and it would be a requirement for pretty much any autoloading design. If your ammo is out of spec the gun is either ineffective, jams, or blows up so the man hours to produce actually useable ammo would be insane.
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