History has been shaped by war and military innovation. The following guns display advances and evolutions in projectile weaponry and have helped shape the stories of diverse nations worldwide.
1) The Hand Mortar
The hand mortar is the spiritual predecessor to today’s grenade launchers. Using this weapon was more convoluted and dangerous, however, as the shooter first lit the grenade then loaded it into the muzzle.
Hand mortars date to around the 16th and 17th century but surviving specimens are relatively rare. It’s possible that this is due to their lack of popularity and practicality. Using a hand mortar was always risky, thanks to its tendency to occaexplode in the gunner’s hands. These finely decorated pieces also had different barrel types for alternative uses, such as launching fireworks or other pyrotechnics.
2) German Wheellock
The city of Augsburg, Germany, made some of the finest medieval guns. Not only in quality but also in design, with various ornaments fit for nobles or an old-timey dandy. These antique pistols, like the one pictured, featured an engraved pine cone, the “control mark of the city of Augsburg.”
It also has an ebonized stock that is inlaid with staghorn and various designs, including foliage, a lion’s mask, dragons with devil faces, and two crowned women. Pistols like these would have initially been used by cavalry.
3) Palm pistols
Concealed carry has always been a goal, and few pulled it more effectively than the pocket watch-sized palm pistols. Including the Le Protector, developed in 1982 by French inventor Jacques Edmond Turbiaux.
Also called “squeeze pistols,” these guns are double-action revolvers that fit clandestinely in the hand, with their small barrels poking out between the fingers. The lack of traditional trigger and external hammer make them easy to operate from one’s pocket, as a simple squeeze fires the pistol. Their various designs make palm pistols a favored item among antique collectors.
4) Ax-Pistol
Those with wealth, power, and position flaunted it in many ways. Among the most favored, throughout history, was by displaying ornate weaponry. Likw the astonishingly fine ax-pistol of Grand Duke Ferdinand I de’ Medici, made around 1580 in south Germany.
This weapon results from the invention of the wheellock mechanism in the early 16th century. The new technology led to the combination pistols and other arms, such as knives, maces, or axes. Rather than for battle or hunt, they became expensive curiosities for the wealthy.
5) The Mayflower Carbine
This .50 caliber rifle is indicative of the single-shot arms carried by the early New England settlers. This specific carbine is thought to have been brought from England by John Alden, a pilgrim leader of the Plymouth Colony.
Alden was a 20-year-old cooper (barrel-maker) who joined the militia of Captain Miles Standish to protect his fellow settlers from external threats. The gun was discovered while restoring Alden’s home in 1924.
6) French-Style Small-Caliber Wheellocks
French armorers set the gun-making trends In the 1600s and 1700s by producing finely decorated weaponry. One can instantly see the differences between this and the earlier German-made pistol.
The French guns are marked by slender, delicate lines, a small-caliber barrel, and a characteristically French wheellock. Such excellent items would have been limited to the wealthy. The rich received a decorative bang for their buck, with images of a siren, snarling dog, a fleur-de-lis, a flaming heart, and a serpent entwined around an arrow.
7) Medieval Hand Cannons
Hand cannons, like this medieval piece forged around 1350, are among the earliest-known firearms. This cannon is older than standardized ammunition, so it was loaded with improvised projectiles like stones or nails.
It required two men to operate. One man held the hand cannon, which was attached to a pole, while the second operator utilized a slow match to ignite a charge made of black powder propellant, an invention that came westward from China. The cannons were inaccurate, yet still employed on battlefields for their shock value.
8) Ethan Allen Pocket Rifle
American history has at least two famous Ethan Allens, including arms-maker Ethan Allen (1808-1871). Allen operated under various names and earned armorer immortality through his weapons; the first being the Pocket Rifle, developed in 1836.
Despite its name, it was a pistol: a “single-shot under-hammer percussion pistol.” These early Allens arms are notable for their elongated profile, composed of a .31 nine-inch rifled (explaining the name) barrel.
9) The Middle Eastern Jezzail
The jezzail is a muzzle-loaded long arm developed and used in North Africa and the Middle East. When King Phillip III signed an edict of expulsion exiling Spanish Muslims to North Africa, the expelled people took back various skills, including gun-making.
These long arms were of the snaphance (or snaphaunce) mechanism that pre-dated the flintlock, and remained in production through the Victorian era. They’re optimized to be fired from a saddle. Additionally, the jezzail is an oft-personalized gun, meaning each owner makes their piece unique. This specific gun is of the Ottoman style.
10) The Billinghurst-Requa Battery
Also known as a volley gun, this may be considered as the first viable machine gun. It was designed and built by dentist Josephus Requa and armorer William Billinghurst, then patented in 1862, beating out the more-famous Gatling gun by a couple of months.
The Volley Gun featured 25 barrels arrayed like a fan and mounted on a wooden carriage. A skilled crew of three could fire 175 shots per minute, though the gun was not widely used. When employed, it was mostly utilized to guard defensive positions in narrow urban environs.
11) Nock Guns
Nock guns incorporated multiple barrels on a single firearm; in this case, seven. Such guns were born of British engineer James Wilson and London-based gunmaker Henry Nock, around 1779.
The Royal Navy bought hundreds of Nock guns during the early stages of the Napoleonic Wars but their design proved impractical. The guns had a standard flintlock and smooth-bore barrels, as rifling proved too tedious.
The multi-barrel firearm was made for ship-to-ship fighting, but the massive recoil made it difficult to use and often led to injuries, including broken shoulders.
12) Ethan Allen’s Six-Barreled Revolving Percussion Pistol
Ethan Allen is also well-known for another conveniently sized firearm, the “pepperbox” gun. Percussion arms are so named because they fire via percussive force: a strike (or percussion) sends a flash into the breech to ignite a powder charge. Prior to the invention of Samuel Colt’s perennially famed revolver, pepperbox arms were the most-used multi-shot guns in both America and Europe.
13) Horseman’s Hammer with Built-In Pistol
A horseman’s hammer (also called a horseman’s pick) was similar to a warhammer. It had a downward curving point, which could be used to penetrate the spaces between armor plates, or to dismount riders from their horses.
This cavalry weapon originated in the Middle East and was also used across Europe. As a very rare example, Augsburg armorers combined this 16th-century horseman’s hammer with a wheellock pistol.
14) Kolibri
Guns have reached impressive dimensions on both ends of the size scale, and it’s no surprise that the smallest was made by a watchmaker. The Kolibri, German for hummingbird, usually gets credit as the smallest production pistol.
Yet despite their instantly remarkable size, only about one thousand were made between 1910 and 1914, the beginning of The War. It has a proprietary 2.7mm centerfire cartridge but only fires at 650 feet per second—below typical muzzle velocity. Still fascinating considering it fits snuggly in one’s hand.
15) Ottoman Miquelet Rifles
Miquelet rifles are named after the miquelet mechanism, an Italian or Spanish type of flintlock. These rifles were used by many past armies, including the Ottomans, who had been crafting guns and artillery since the 1400s.
Such rifles were popular “throughout the Ottoman Empire from the seventeenth into the early twentieth century.” They would have likely been made for Imperial guards or military leaders, hence the exquisite ornamentation.
