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By Root 2118 0

that attribute was too tall an order, however, so Hall initially focused on accelerating the speed of reloading. His Eureka! moment happened sometime in the winter of 1811. The main factor retarding the number of shots per minute that a rifleman could fire, he had noticed, was the necessity of ramrodding ball and powder down a lengthy barrel. Hall adapted a pistol design and then integrated it into the rifle’s firing mechanism. Pistols also required muzzle-loading, but because their barrels were so short, charging them was a relatively rapid and easy job; some barrels could even be unscrewed and the bullet and powder placed directly in the chamber. Unscrewing a rifle barrel would have been as time-consuming as loading from the muzzle, but Hall did insert a solid metal block—a “receiver”—containing the flintlock fire-mechanism and hollowed-out chamber into the breech. The block was hinged and was kept in place with a spring-catch that the shooter released to raise it. All the rifleman had to do then was pour in powder, drop a bullet on top, snap the receiver back into place, prime the pan, and fire. With this one shortcut, Hall had circumvented the entire centuries-old, laborious process of muzzle-loading.14 He was not the first to ever think of loading a gun at the breech, but he pioneered a safe, effective, and reliable method of doing it.

Excited about his invention, Hall sought to patent it, but in so doing he learned that the apparently ever-upward line of technological progress is often frustrated by the crooked timber of humanity. In his case, the crook was Dr. William Thornton, a pious Quaker whose religious principles may well have included pacifism but not, apparently, honesty. Thornton, a well-connected Jefferson toady, ran the Patent Office, and soon after Hall filed his application, he sent him a letter regretting that a patent on such a mechanism had already been taken out. By one Dr. William Thornton, as it happened, back in 1792. Still, Thornton proposed that he was “desirous of sharing the invention with me and hoped that there would be room enough for both of us.”

Hall, intrigued and perhaps a tad suspicious of this remarkable coincidence, traveled to Washington to see Thornton’s prototype. With a flourish, Thornton produced, of all things, a Revolutionary-era British rifle that bore no resemblance whatso ever to Hall’s version. The two guns were so dissimilar that Hall told Thornton that “we might each have obtained patents for our respective developments without any risk of ever interfering with each other.” Thornton refused to budge, so Hall approached Secretary of State James Monroe. In the secretary’s office, Hall remembered, “I was advised that it would be more to my interest to be connected with Doct. Thornton even at the expense of half my right than have it wholly to myself.” If he played by the unwritten rules, Monroe said, Thornton’s influence “would be exerted in my favor but otherwise would be exerted against me.” If the latter, Hall could expect no assistance “in case of any attempts by others to interfere with my rights by attempting the obtainment of patents for the same invention connected with alterations, an event frequently occurring with patents likely to prove important.”15

The fix was in. If Hall dared contest the decision, he would find himself tied up in legal knots for years to come and never see a penny from his invention; however, for just a modest one-off concession, paths would be cleared, red tape cut through, and obstacles miraculously hurdled. For his payoff, Thornton declared himself content to receive half the proceeds arising from the sale of the patent rights to private manufacturers, but he generously would allow Hall to keep the profits from any rifles made in his own factories. As would so many others, Thornton underestimated Hall’s stubbornness and determination to have his own way. Hall, having no choice, agreed to the terms but immediately frustrated his tormentor by refusing to sell the patent rights to anyone and then established his own business to escape