American Rifle - Alexander Rose [49]
On that date Hall reached the meridian of his career, and despite the imminent departure of the loathed Stubblefield (Andrew Jackson’s election ensured that he and his Junto would be cast out, like biblical unfortunates, into the wilderness), henceforth his victories would be tempered by failures and beset by aggravations. The most pressing problem confronting him was time. In the beginning his rifle had been the most advanced firearm in the world, but here it was, seventeen long, hard years after he had first approached the War Department, and the rest of the world was inexorably catching up. Though Hall’s receiver retained its formidable technological lead, knowledge of the principle of interchangeability had filtered out to the wider business world. Johann Nikolaus von Dreyse in Prussia was quietly working on the still more futuristic “needle-gun” (which would become the first breech-loading rifle with a bolt-action mechanism), and a Scot, the Reverend John Forsyth, had invented the precursor of the percussion cap, the mechanism that would break that centuries-long supremacy of the flintlock.
Forsyth was a peculiar mixture of Enlightenment scientist and conservative divine who ministered to his human flocks on Sundays and devoted Mondays to Saturdays to shooting the feathered kind. In 1805 he had been struck by a genuinely inspired revelation. He noticed, while out hunting, that the sparks (actually, minute pieces of red-hot metal) lit by the flint’s scraping and the puff of smoke emanating from his priming pan alerted his sitting prey to imminent danger. The birds got a moment’s head start before the gunpowder ignited and the ball reached them. Hoping to reduce the delay, Forsyth began investigating the alchemical wonders of fulminates.
Fulminates (aptly derived from the Latin word for “lightning”) were the eighteenth century’s miracle chemical. A new class of compounds, they were exceedingly explosive, to such an extent that a few dozen grains were sufficient to demolish a lab. One version was so sensitive that a falling drop of water could detonate it; it could even blow up under the shifting weight of its own crystals. After several, almost lethal, attempts to develop fulminates for military use, scientists decided to stick with regular gunpowder.60
Forsyth’s great insight was to realize that if one used fulminate as priming powder, not as a replacement for the gunpowder itself, an explosion could be controlled. When concussed by a metal object, a fulminate would detonate so rapidly that a bird would have no time to react, and when used in really tiny quantities, it presented little danger to the shooter.
It took him two years of hard work and lonely experimentation, but in April 1807 Forsyth patented a workable formula, in addition to a perfume-bottle–shaped dispenser that deposited the requisite amount in the pan, to which he attached a tube leading into the chamber. When the hammer hit the minute dot of “super-primer,” ignition was instantaneous, and the flame descended the tube to burn the powder and propel the bullet.
It was a brilliant innovation, and like Hall, Forsyth soon found himself embroiled in patent problems. In Forsyth’s case several other inventors came forward and claimed the concept for themselves. In 1819 the matter finally reached the courts, where Lord Abbott ruled in Forsyth’s favor on the grounds that when other parties claim the right of simultaneous discovery, the first to patent it should legally be recognized as the inventor. Despite his victory Forsyth had