Virtual International Authority File
The Virtual International Authority File is an international authority file. It is a joint project of several national libraries and operated by the Online Computer Library Center. Discussion about having a common international authority started in the late 1990s. After a series of failed attempts to come up with a unique common authority file, the new idea was to link existing national authorities; this would present all the benefits of a common file without requiring a large investment of time and expense in the process. The project was initiated by the US Library of Congress, the German National Library and the OCLC on August 6, 2003; the Bibliothèque nationale de France joined the project on October 5, 2007. The project transitioned to being a service of the OCLC on April 4, 2012; the aim is to link the national authority files to a single virtual authority file. In this file, identical records from the different data sets are linked together. A VIAF record receives a standard data number, contains the primary "see" and "see also" records from the original records, refers to the original authority records.
The data are available for research and data exchange and sharing. Reciprocal updating uses the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting protocol; the file numbers are being added to Wikipedia biographical articles and are incorporated into Wikidata. VIAF's clustering algorithm is run every month; as more data are added from participating libraries, clusters of authority records may coalesce or split, leading to some fluctuation in the VIAF identifier of certain authority records. Authority control Faceted Application of Subject Terminology Integrated Authority File International Standard Authority Data Number International Standard Name Identifier Wikipedia's authority control template for articles Official website VIAF at OCLC
Repeating rifle
A repeating rifle, or repeater for short, is a single-barrel rifle capable of repeated discharges following a single ammunition reload by having multiple cartridges stored in a magazine and fed into the chamber by the bolt via either a manual or automatic mechanism, while the act of chambering the rifle also recocks the action for the following shot. In common usage, the term "repeating rifle" most refers to manually-operated weapons, as opposed to self-loading rifles, which use the recoil and blowback of the previous shot to cycle the action and load the next round though all self-loading firearms are technically a subcategory of repeating firearms. Repeating rifles were a significant advance over the preceding single-shot breechloading rifles when used for military combat, as they allowed a much greater rate of fire. Repeating rifles saw use in the American Civil War during the early 1860s, the first repeating air rifle to see military service was the Windbüchse Rifle. While some early long guns were made using the revolver mechanism popular in handguns, these did not have longevity.
Though the revolver mechanism was fine for pistols, it posed a problem with long guns: without special sealing details, the cylinder produces a gas discharge close to the face when the weapon is fired from the shoulder, as was a common approach with rifles. Although most falling-blocks were single-shot actions, some early repeaters used this design, notably the Norwegian Krag–Petersson and the U. S. Spencer rifle; the former loaded from a Henry-style underbarrel magazine. In a classic lever-action firearm of the Henry-Winchester type, rounds are individually loaded into a tubular magazine parallel to and below the barrel. A short bolt is held in place with an over center toggle action. Once closed, the over center action prevents opening by the force on the bolt when the weapon is fired; this toggle action is operated by a hand grip. When operated, a spring in the tubular magazine pushes a fresh round into position. Returning the operating lever to the home position chambers the round and closes the breach.
An interlock prevents firing unless the toggle is closed. The famous Model 1873 Winchester is exemplary of this type. Lever-action designs, such as Marlin leverguns and those designed for Winchester by John Browning, use one or two vertical locking blocks instead of a toggle-link. There exist lever-action rifles that feed from a box magazine, which allows them to use pointed bullets. A one-off example of Lever action reloading on automatic firearms is the M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun; this weapon had a swinging lever beneath its barrel, actuated by a gas bleed in the barrel, unlocking the breech to reload. This unique operation gave the nickname "potato digger" as the lever swung each time the weapon fired. With a pump-action firearm, the action is operated by a movable fore-end that the shooter moves backwards and forwards to eject a spent round, extract and chamber a fresh round of ammunition. Pump-actions are associated with shotguns, but one example of a pump-action rifle is the Remington Model 7600 series.
Rifles with pump action are called slide-action. This style of rifle is still popular with some local law enforcement branches as a rifle, easy to train officers who are familiar with the pump shotgun; the bolt is a mechanism, operated by hand to extract a fired cartridge, move a fresh round into the chamber and reset the firing pin, readying the weapon to fire again. The bolt contains the firing pin; the bolt is held in place with a lever. Moving this lever out of the notch will release the restraint on the bolt, allowing it to be drawn back. An extractor removes the spent cartridge, ejected through the lever slot. A spring at the bottom of the magazine pushes up the reserve rounds, positioning the topmost between the bolt and the chamber at the base of the barrel. Pushing the bolt lever forward chambers this round and pushing the lever into the notch locks the bolt and enables the trigger mechanism; the complete cycle action resets the firing pin. The Mauser rifle of the late 19th and early 20th centuries is the most famous of the bolt action types, with most similar weapons derived from this pioneering design, such as the M1903 Springfield and the Karabiner 98 Kurz rifle.
The Russian Mosin–Nagant rifle, the British Lee–Enfield, the Norwegian Krag–Jørgensen are examples of alternate bolt action designs. In "blowback" operation, the bolt is not locked at the moment of firing. To prevent violent recoil, in most firearms using this mechanism the opening of the bolt is delayed in some way. In many small arms, the round is fired while the bolt is still travelling forward, the bolt does not open until this forward momentum is overcome. Other methods involve delaying the opening until two rollers have been forced back into recesses in the receiver in which the bolt is carried. Simple blowback action is simple and inexpensive to manufacture, but is limited in the power it can handle, so it is seen on small caliber weapons such as machine pistols and submachine guns. Lever-delayed blowback, as seen in for example the French FAMAS assault rifle, can handle more powerful cartridges but is more complicated and expensive to manufacture. In a recoil-operated firearm, the breech is locked, the barrel recoils as part of the firing cycle.
In long-recoil actions, such as the Browning Auto-5 shotgun, the barrel and breechblock remain locked for the full recoil travel, separate on the return.
Daniel B. Wesson
Daniel Baird Wesson was a firearms designer from the United States. He was the co-founder of Smith & Wesson and responsible for helping develop several influential firearm designs over the course of his life. Daniel Baird Wesson was the son of Betsey Wesson. Daniel's father was a farmer and manufacturer of wooden plows and Daniel worked on his father's farm and attended public school until the age of eighteen, when he apprenticed himself to his brother Edwin Wesson in Northborough, Massachusetts. Wesson was married to May 26, 1847 in Thompson, Connecticut. Hawes' father objected to the couple's engagement fearing that Wesson was a "mere gunsmith" with no future, forcing the couple to elope. Wesson's salary at Smith & Wesson amounted to over $160,000 a year by 1865; the couple had three sons: Sarah Janette Wesson. In 1854, Daniel B. Wesson partnered with Horace Smith and Courtlandt Palmer to develop the Smith & Wesson Lever pistol and the first repeating rifle – the Volcanic. Production was in the shop of Horace Smith in Norwich, CT.
Using the name "Smith & Wesson Company", the name was changed to "Volcanic Repeating Arms Company" in 1855, with the addition of new investors, one of whom was Oliver Winchester. The Volcanic Repeating Arms Company obtained all rights for the Volcanic designs as well as the ammunition, from the Smith & Wesson Company. Wesson remained as plant manager for eight months before rejoining Smith to found the "Smith & Wesson Revolver Company" upon obtaining the licensing of the Rollin White "rear loading cylinder" patent. In 1856 Smith & Wesson began to produce a small revolver designed to fire the Rimfire cartridge they had patented in August 1854; this revolver was the first successful self-contained cartridge revolver available in the world. Smith & Wesson secured patents for the revolver to prevent other manufacturers from producing a cartridge revolver – giving the young company a lucrative business. At the age of 65, Horace Smith retired from the company and sold his share of the business to D. B.
Wesson, making him the sole owner of the firm. In the late 1800s the company introduced its line of hammerless revolvers. In 1899, Smith & Wesson introduced what is arguably the most famous revolver in the world, the.38 Military & Police. This revolver has been in continual production since that year and has been used by every police agency and military force around the world. In 1900, Daniel Wesson, a strong advocate of homeopathy, founded the Hampden Homeopathic Hospital with a donation of $100,000; the hospital was located in Massachusetts. In 1923 the hospital switched from homeopathy to modern-day medicine. Wesson remained active in the firm until his death in 1906. After a four-year illness, Wesson succumbed to "... heart failure superinduced by neuritis... Daniel Wesson was buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Massachusetts, his great-grandson Daniel B. Wesson II, followed the family tradition as gunsmith. Wesson lived and worked in the city of Springfield, building hospitals and a home there. Wesson’s primary home was located at 50 Maple Street in Springfield and was the city’s most extravagant mansion.
Wesson hired New York architect Bruce Price to design his residence in the early 1890's. The design was published in the American Architect and Building News in 1893; the house was three and a half stories in height and constructed of pink granite with a red slate roof and bronze cresting and finials. Stylistically it was adapted from the French chateaux of the Renaissance. Completed in 1898, the house cost between $350,000 and $450,000. At Wesson's death in 1906 it was to be given to the Connecticut Valley Historical Society, but they weren't able to raise the necessary endowment. In 1915 it became the clubhouse for the Colony Club of Springfield and remained such until fire destroyed the house in 1966. In 1886, Daniel Wesson built a summer home in Northborough, Massachusetts called Wesson Terrace, it is now was in the past a restaurant and function hall. It was closed in December 2014, they were unable to find any rumors went around Northborough that it would be torn down. The people of Northborough came together and at the annual town meeting in 2016 the town voted to purchase the White Cliffs.
The summer house he built in Northborough, Massachusetts was on land belonging to his wife's family. He was apprenticed in Northborough at his brother's gunsmith shop. Having learned the gun trade in town, as well as having a wife from town, Daniel Baird Wesson returned with his wife to build a summer house there, it was not the first mansion built by the wealthy inventor/industrialist. 13 houses were constructed for him but White Cliffs is the only remaining Wesson mansion. The others have all been destroyed by fires; the summer house benefited from his numerous European trips. He was an avid admirer of the Medici period, family, in Italy, had a few of the Countess's rooms dismantled and rebuild in Northborough. Smith & Wesson guns were worldwide; this was from their licensing agreements set up with foreign countries and rulers to mass-produce them for their armies. S&W sidearms were desired sidearms in many foreign armies, including the armies of the Russian Czar. White Cliffs was named aft
Patent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. A patent gives its owner the right to exclude others from making, using and importing an invention for a limited period of time twenty years; the patent rights are granted in exchange for an enabling public disclosure of the invention. In most countries patent rights fall under civil law and the patent holder needs to sue someone infringing the patent in order to enforce his or her rights. In some industries patents are an essential form of competitive advantage; the procedure for granting patents, requirements placed on the patentee, the extent of the exclusive rights vary between countries according to national laws and international agreements. However, a granted patent application must include one or more claims that define the invention. A patent may include many claims; these claims must meet relevant patentability requirements, such as novelty and non-obviousness. Under the World Trade Organization's TRIPS Agreement, patents should be available in WTO member states for any invention, in all fields of technology, provided they are new, involve an inventive step, are capable of industrial application.
There are variations on what is patentable subject matter from country to country among WTO member states. TRIPS provides that the term of protection available should be a minimum of twenty years; the word patent originates from the Latin patere, which means "to lay open". It is a shortened version of the term letters patent, an open document or instrument issued by a monarch or government granting exclusive rights to a person, predating the modern patent system. Similar grants included land patents, which were land grants by early state governments in the USA, printing patents, a precursor of modern copyright. In modern usage, the term patent refers to the right granted to anyone who invents something new and non-obvious; some other types of intellectual property rights are called patents in some jurisdictions: industrial design rights are called design patents in the US, plant breeders' rights are sometimes called plant patents, utility models and Gebrauchsmuster are sometimes called petty patents or innovation patents.
The additional qualification utility patent is sometimes used to distinguish the primary meaning from these other types of patents. Particular species of patents for inventions include biological patents, business method patents, chemical patents and software patents. Although there is some evidence that some form of patent rights was recognized in Ancient Greece in the Greek city of Sybaris, the first statutory patent system is regarded to be the Venetian Patent Statute of 1474. Patents were systematically granted in Venice as of 1474, where they issued a decree by which new and inventive devices had to be communicated to the Republic in order to obtain legal protection against potential infringers; the period of protection was 10 years.. As Venetians emigrated, they sought similar patent protection in their new homes; this led to the diffusion of patent systems to other countries. The English patent system evolved from its early medieval origins into the first modern patent system that recognised intellectual property in order to stimulate invention.
By the 16th century, the English Crown would habitually abuse the granting of letters patent for monopolies. After public outcry, King James I of England was forced to revoke all existing monopolies and declare that they were only to be used for "projects of new invention"; this was incorporated into the Statute of Monopolies in which Parliament restricted the Crown's power explicitly so that the King could only issue letters patent to the inventors or introducers of original inventions for a fixed number of years. The Statute became the foundation for developments in patent law in England and elsewhere. Important developments in patent law emerged during the 18th century through a slow process of judicial interpretation of the law. During the reign of Queen Anne, patent applications were required to supply a complete specification of the principles of operation of the invention for public access. Legal battles around the 1796 patent taken out by James Watt for his steam engine, established the principles that patents could be issued for improvements of an existing machine and that ideas or principles without specific practical application could legally be patented.
Influenced by the philosophy of John Locke, the granting of patents began to be viewed as a form of intellectual property right, rather than the obtaining of economic privilege. The English legal system became the foundation for patent law in countries with a common law heritage, including the United States, New Zealand and Australia. In the Thirteen Colonies, inventors could obtain patents through petition to a given colony's legislature. In 1641, Samuel Winslow was granted the first patent in North America by the Massachusetts General Court for a new process for making salt; the modern French patent system was created during the Revolution in 1791. Patents were granted without examination. Patent costs were high. Importation patents protected new devices coming from foreign countries; the patent law was revised in 1844 - patent cost was lowered and importation patents were abolished. The first Patent Act of the U. S. Congress was passed on April 10, 1790, titled "An Act to promote the progress of
Oliver Winchester
Oliver Fisher Winchester was an American businessman and politician. He was the son of Samuel Winchester and Hannah Bates and was born in Boston on November 30, 1810, he married Jane Ellen Hope in Boston on February 20, 1834. Their children were: Ann Rebecca Winchester who married Charles B. Dye William Wirt Winchester who married Sarah Lockwood Pardee Hannah Jane Winchester who married Thomas Gray Bennett Winchester was known for manufacturing and marketing the Winchester repeating rifle, a much re-designed descendant of the Volcanic rifle of some years earlier. Winchester started as a clothing manufacturer in Connecticut. During this period he discovered that a division of Smith & Wesson firearms was failing financially with one of their newly patented arms. Having an eye for opportunity, Winchester assembled venture capital together with other stockholders and acquired the S&W division, better known as the Volcanic Repeating Arms Company, in 1855. By 1857, Winchester had positioned himself as the principal stockholder in the company and relocated to New Haven, changing the name to New Haven Arms Company.
The company was plagued by sluggish returns, in part attributed to the design and poor performance of the Volcanic cartridge: a hollow conical ball filled with black powder and sealed by a cork primer. Although the Volcanic's repeater design far outpaced the rival technology, the poor performance and reliability of the.25 and.32 caliber cartridges used in the pistol and rifle models was little match for the competitors' larger calibers. Winchester had inherited a brilliant engineer, Benjamin Tyler Henry, an invaluable asset. Henry sought to improve on the Volcanic repeating rifle by enlarging the frame and magazine to accommodate seventeen of his newly redesigned, all-brass cased.44 caliber rimfire cartridges. This new cartridge put the new company on the map, Henry's ingenuity was rewarded with a patent in his name on October 16, 1860, for what became the famous Henry rifle; the Henry rifle was manufactured for six years with a total production of 12,000 rifles, a number which included both iron and brass frame models.
Following the success of the Henry rifle, the company was reorganized once more and renamed the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. In 1866, employee Nelson King's new improved patent remedied flaws in the Henry rifle by incorporating a loading gate on the side of the frame and integrating a round sealed magazine, covered by a fore stock; the first Winchester rifle was the Model 1866, nicknamed the Yellow Boy. Repeating rifles were used to some extent in the American Civil War. However, the United States Army at that time did not use many repeating rifles as they represented a new, untested technology. Repeating rifles were not used until after the war when they became popular with civilians. Military authorities concentrated on perfecting breech-loading single shot rifles for many more years. With thousands of rifles in the hands of the average pioneer, the Winchester repeating rifles gained a reputation as "the gun that won the West". Oliver Winchester was active in politics, serving as a New Haven City Commissioner, Republican Presidential elector in 1864, as Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut from 1866 - 1867.
When Winchester died on December 11, 1880, his ownership in the company passed to his son, William Wirt Winchester, who died of tuberculosis in March of the next year. William's wife, believed the family was cursed by the spirits killed by the Winchester rifle, moved to San Jose, where she began building a chaotic mansion now known as the Winchester Mystery House with her inheritance, intending to confuse the spirits seeking revenge
Henry rifle
The Henry repeating rifle is a lever-action, breech-loading, tubular magazine rifle famed both for its use at the Battle of the Little Bighorn and being the basis for the iconic Winchester rifle of the American Wild West. Designed by Benjamin Tyler Henry in 1860, the Henry was introduced in the early 1860s and produced through 1866 in the United States by the New Haven Arms Company, it was adopted in small quantities by the Union in the Civil War, favored for its greater firepower than the standard issue carbine. Many found their way West, notably in the hands of the Sioux and Cheyenne in their obliteration of Custer's U. S. Cavalry troops in June 1876. Modern replicas are produced by A. Uberti Firearms and Henry Repeating Arms. Most are chambered.45 Long Colt. The original Henry rifle was a sixteen shot.44 caliber rimfire breech-loading lever-action rifle, patented by Benjamin Tyler Henry in 1860 after three years of design work. The Henry was an improved version of the earlier Volition, Volcanic.
The Henry used copper rimfire cartridges with a 216 grain bullet over 25 grains of black powder. Production was small until the middle of 1864. Nine hundred were manufactured between summer and October 1862. By the time production ended in 1866 14,000 units had been manufactured. For a Civil War soldier, owning a Henry rifle was a point of pride. Letters home would call them "Sixteen" or "Seventeen"-shooters, depending whether a round was loaded in the chamber. Just 1,731 of the standard rifles were purchased by the government during the Civil War; the Commonwealth of Kentucky purchased a further 50. However 6,000 to 7,000 saw use by the Union on the field through private purchases by soldiers who could afford it; the relative fragility of Henrys compared to Spencers hampered their official acceptance. Many infantry soldiers purchased Henrys with their reenlistment bounties of 1864. Most of these units were associated with Sherman's Western troops; when used the brass-receiver rifles had an exceptionally high rate of fire compared to any other weapon on the battlefield.
Soldiers who saved their pay to buy one believed. Since tactics had not been developed to take advantage of their firepower, Henrys were used by scouts, flank guards, raiding parties rather than in regular infantry formations. Confederate Colonel John Mosby, who became infamous for his sudden raids against advanced Union positions, when first encountering the Henry in battle called it "that damned Yankee rifle that can be loaded on Sunday and fired all week." Since that phrase became associated with the Henry rifle. Those few Confederate troops who came into possession of captured Henry rifles had little way to resupply the ammunition it used, making its widespread use by Confederate forces impractical; the rifle was, known to have been used at least in part by some Confederate units in Louisiana and Virginia, as well as the personal bodyguards of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. According to firearms historian Herbert G. Houze, one man armed with a Henry rifle was the equivalent of 14 or 15 men equipped with single-shot guns.
Henry's rifle was used in the January Uprising by Count Jan Kanty Dzialynski in the Battle of Ignacew. In the memoirs from the epoch, it is reported that Dzialynski was shooting from a 16-shot rifle during the battle. Another user of Henry's rifle in the January Uprising was Paul Garnier d'Aubin, officer of the French 23rd Infantry Regiment; the Henry rifle used a.44 caliber cartridge with 26 to 28 grains of black powder. This gave it lower muzzle velocity and energy than other repeaters of the era, such as the Spencer; the lever action, on the down-stroke, ejected the spent cartridge from the chamber and cocked the hammer. A spring in the magazine forced the next round into the follower; as designed, the Henry lacked any form of safety. When not in use its hammer rested on the cartridge rim. If left cocked, it was in the firing position without a safety. Current Henry models will not fire if dropped or the hammer is released by accident, it can hammer cocked or hammer down. From owners manual "This firearm is designed with an ultra-safe patented Transfer Bar Safety Mechanism.
This safety system prevents the gun from being fired under all circumstances, except when the hammer is cocked and the trigger is pulled. If the hammer is cocked and the trigger is pulled, the gun would fire as normal. However, if the hammer is cocked and is accidentally dislodged by some other means other than the trigger being pulled, the gun will not fire. If the hammer is in the process of being cocked and is accidentally released and dropped into the fired down position, before it is cocked, the gun will not fire; this rifle can be safely carried loaded with the hammer in the fired down resting position. Please note that this rifle does not have a half cock safety position nor a crossbolt safety."To load the magazine, the shooter moves the cartridge-follower along the slot in the top portion of the magazine-tube and pivots it to the right to open the front-end of the magazine. He loads the 15 cartridges one by one; when full, he release the follower. While never issued on a large scale, the Henry rifle demonstrated its advantages of rapid fire at close range several times
Springfield Model 1861
The Springfield Model 1861 was a Minié-type rifled musket shoulder-arm used by the United States Army and Marine Corps during the American Civil War. Referred to as the "Springfield", it was the most used U. S. Army weapon during the Civil War, favored for its range and reliability; the barrel was forty inches long, firing a.58 caliber Minié ball, the total weight was nine pounds. The Springfield had a general effective range of 200 to 300 yards but could reliably hit man sized targets out to 500 yards when used by marksmen, used percussion caps to fire. Well-trained troops were able to fire at a rate of three aimed shots per minute while maintaining accuracy up to 500 yards, though firing distances in the war were much shorter; the most notable difference between the Model 1861 and the earlier Model 1855 was the elimination of the Maynard tape primer for the Model 1861. Further, unlike the Model 1855, the Model 1861 was never produced in a two-banded "rifle" configuration; the Springfield was aimed using flip-up leaf sights.
The sight had two leaves, one for 300 yards and the other for 500 yards, with both leaves down, the sight was set for a range of one hundred yards. By contrast, the British Pattern 1853 Enfield, favored by the Confederates, utilized a ladder-sight system with a hundred yard increments, using steps from 100 to 400 yards and a flip up ladder for ranges beyond 500 yards. While the Enfield's sights did allow finer range settings, the Springfield's simple leaves were more rugged and were less expensive to produce; the Enfield's sights extended to 900 yards, compared to the 500 yard maximum range of the Springfield's sights. Realistically, hitting anything beyond 600 yards with either weapon was a matter of luck. While the sight designs were different, the two weapons were otherwise similar, had similar effective ranges; the Springfield Rifle cost twenty dollars each at the Springfield Armory where they were made. Overwhelmed by the demand, the armory opened its weapons patterns up to twenty private contractors.
The most notable producer of contract Model 1861 Springfields was Colt, who made several minor design changes in their version, the "Colt Special" rifled musket. These changes included redesigned barrel bands, a new hammer, a redesigned bolster. Several of these changes were adopted by the Ordnance Department and incorporated into the Model 1863 rifled musket; the Springfield Model 1861 was equipped with a square socket bayonet. The Model 1861 was scarce in the early years of the Civil War, it is unlikely. However, over time and more regiments began receiving Model 1861 rifled muskets, though this upgrade appeared somewhat quicker in the Eastern Theater of Operations. Over 1,000,000 Model 1861 rifles were produced, with the Springfield Armory increasing its production during the war by contracting out to twenty other firms in the Union; the number of Model 1861 muskets produced by the Springfield Armory was 265,129 between January 1, 1861 and December 31, 1863. According to United States Muskets and Carbines by Arcadi Gluckman Colonel Infantry, United States Army, published 1949.
The Model 1861 was a step forward in U. S. small arms design. However, some argue. While more accurate in the hands of an experienced marksman, the rifled musket's accuracy was lost in the hands of recruits who received only limited marksmanship training. Further, most Civil War firefights were waged at a close range using massed-fire tactics, minimizing the effect of the new rifle's long-range accuracy. Lastly, the.58 caliber bullet, when fired, followed a rainbow-like trajectory. As a result, many inexperienced soldiers who did not adjust their sights would shoot over their enemies' heads in combat. There are numerous accounts of this happening in the war's earlier battles. With this in mind, soldiers were instructed to aim low. Due to the width of the front sight on the Model 1861 Special the only bayonet that would fit was the Collins manufactured bayonet; the Springfield Model 1861 was succeeded by the Springfield Model 1863, a improved version of the Model 1861. With the introduction of modern brass ammunition after the war, the Model 1861 served as the starting point for several breechloaders, most of which were converted Model 1861 rifles, culminating in the Springfield Model 1873 which would serve through the Indian Wars and all U.
S. military actions until the end of the 19th century. The Springfield Model 1861 is popular today among Civil War reenactors and collectors alike for its accuracy and historical background. Original antique Springfields are expensive, so companies such as Davide Pedersoli & C. Armi Sport and Euro Arms make modern reproductions at much more affordable prices. List of individual weapons of the U. S. Armed Forces List of wars invol
