Sánta Ákos: Vadászfegyverek - A Magyar Mezőgazdasági Múzeum tárgykatalógusai 4. (Budapest, 2018)

garian hunters as well. Our collection keeps both a carbine, the military version of the rifle, as well as a version with a shorter stock favoured by poachers.

Among different types of action the version with the greatest longevity was the bolt action. Based on the Dreyse pinfire gun as its prototype, a 10.4 mm calibre single-shot rifle designed in 1868 by Johann-Friedrich Vetterli was introduced in Switzerland. Vetterli’s design loaded the cartridge from the receiver. While the bolt was used to load and eject cartridges, the rifle used an external hammer. When the trigger was pulled, the hammer dropped, impacting the striker rod, free standing in the bolt, which then forced the forked firing pin to impact the rim and ignited the cartridge. The most wellknown bolt-action rifle is associated with the German constructor Paul Mauser. In 1871 he designed a rifle based on principles similar to those of Vetterli.

The most popular single-shot rifle among hunters had a break-action boxlock mechanism, which by that time had become almost universal with shotguns that were undergoing rapid development. The early versions had the Lefaucheux pinfire mechanism, but by the late 19th century centrefire guns became the norm.26 27 Their shared characteristic is the finer and more accurate rifling of the barrel. From the mid-19th century the shape of projectiles was transformed from the spherical shape to a pointed, lengthened, often hollowed ammunition. For the bagging of more dangerous game such firearms were often used in a double-barrelled format. Their manufacture had to be particularly precise since it was important that the two barrels carried accurately. In the 1870s a novel break-action double barrelled rifle was made that quickly became the most popular firearm of hunters. This was the massively built so-called Express rifle. Its barrel, now with a strengthened bore made usually of cast steel, was shortened to create a counterweight to its increased mass. Its action was similar to the break-action Lancaster gun, but the barrel and the cartridge used for this type were novel. Instead of the then general 16-18 mm calibres chambered for Lefaucheux and Lancaster guns the new cartridges were made with calibres of 11.2 mm or 12.7 mm. The length of the cartidge was 55 to 76 mm, in which the weight of the propellant was increased in relation to the projectile. The new cartridge proved well under ballistic tests, as its trajectory decline was no more than 10 cm within a point-blank range of 150 metres, while its striking force also increased compared to earlier firearms. Such an Express rifle is a valued item of our collection. It was made in the Budapest workshop of the Prague-based Johann Nowotny in the late 19th century, with a top lever, concealed hammer and an ejector.

Towards the end of the 19th century the attention of gun constructors was directed towards combination firearms, capable of firing both bullets and shot. Several of these guns are found in our collection.

The simplest construction is the one shot and one bullet pairing of barrels. In such cases one of the barrels was of cast steel for bullets, while the other was a smoothbore Damascus barrel for shot. In the early 20th century the Drilling gun appeared, with two barrels for shot over and one for bullets under. This was the most widespread combination type. A not so widespread version was the Doppelbüchsdrilling, where the two over barrels are rifled and the one under is smoothbore. Our collection contains a representative of this type. The first Drillings were made in Germany around 1850. These were guns with outer hammers and percussion caps but still muzzle-loading. The first breech-loading combination gun was made in 1878 by Peter Oberhammer in Munich.

REPEATING FIREARMS

With the significant improvement of action there is also a need, especially for the military, to increase the rate of fire. The possibility of firing consecutively from the same barrel was not unknown in earlier centuries. The practical realisation of the method however was only made possible by the invention of the integrated cartridge, which contained both the primer and the gunpowder, and the scaled metal cartridge case with ensured secure loading. The timeline of the development of repeating firearms is well illustrated by the different types of action: revolver action, falling block action, lever action, bolt action and pump action.

Firearms with revolver action were the least widespread, mainly because their point-blank range was quite small and therefore they were inaccurate. Revolver action therefore became significant mostly for handguns.28 The prototype of lever action rifles was patented in the US by Christopher Spencer of Boston in 1860 29 It was fired by cocking a lever to extract a used case and feed a new cartridge from a tube in the buttstock. Like most firearms of the time, the hammer had to be manually cocked in a separate action before the weapon could be fired. A spring in the tube enabled the rounds to be fired one after another. When empty, the spring had to be released and removed before dropping in fresh cartridges, then replaced before resuming firing.30 Our collection does not contain revolver or early lever action rifles, they are only mentioned here for the sake of illustrating the course of development. In the earlier type of lever action the magazine is situated under the barrel, containing the ammunition in a row. One type of these firearms is the Marlin Model 1884, included in our collection. The prototype was designed by Benjamin Tyler Henry in 1855, which was modified by Oliver Winchester in 1865. The magazine has a capacity of 15 rounds, fed through a loading gate on the receiver. The action was employed by the lever, the back-and forth movement of which repeated the discharge. Lever action rifles were made in significant

26 Nándor Illés, A vadőr. Kézi tankönyv (Budapest, 1907), pp. 180-181.

27 Zoltán, p. 40. More on Drillings: Norbert Klups, Der Drilling (Heel, 2017).

28 Zoltán, pp. 54-56.

29 László Kovács, Vadnyugati vadászpuskák (n.l., n.d.), pp. 42-43.

30 Wilkinson, p. 169.