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It's amazing how far technology has advanced. 40 years ago nobody would have believed that a box only 3.5 inches by 6 inches by 1 inch could possibly hold 75 full length movies and over 3,000 songs. I of course refer to modern hard drives. When magnetic disks started being used in computers the disks were 2 ft in diameter and could take 50 disks just to hold one MP3. It's amazing how much we have advanced and how much further things can advance.


On the other hand some things more or less stay the same. All the major discoveries for gun technology happened over 100 years ago.

1. The rifled barrel increased stability and accuracy. We used to use guns that had a smooth barrel. The bullet just slides through and goes on its way. Somewhere along the line someone got the idea to cut a spiral groove in the barrel. I heard it was thought it would make the gun cleaner or something. When the bullet left the rifled barrel though the groove put a spin on the bullet. This gave the bullet more gyroscopic stability making it more accurate.

2. The "conic" bullet for example greatly increased accuracy as well as possibly range. Back in the days of muskets bullets were a sphere, just a regular ball. No matter where the bullet twisted it got a good deal of wind resistance. After getting so far from the barrel there was no telling where it could go.

3. Smokeless powder replaced black powder. Black powder made a lot of black smoke. A sniper could be in trouble because the smoke cloud gives away his position. Smokeless powder still makes smoke, but a lot less so it is harder to see. On the battlefield where several soldiers were grouped together the smoke cloud could make it very difficult to see. Black powder was very inefficient and left a lot of residue inside the barrel so it had to be cleaned more frequently. Smokeless powder produced less residue so it didn't need constant cleaning. It also produced more energy so your bullets hit harder.

4. Primer caps made for safer more reliable firing. Before the primer cap there was flint lock and match lock. Match lock kept a burning rope near your gunpowder which was dangerous. Flint locks took a long time to fire because the flint had to burn powder in a primer pan before it ignited the powder charge to fire the bullet. Primer caps relied on percussion to fire a small flame to set off the powder.

5. The enclosed cartridge combined the conic bullet, smokeless powder, and primer all into a single unit so you no longer had to load everything separately. Now they are combined in a single unit to be loaded which makes automatic weapons possible and really just reduces reload time for every gun there is.





It amazes me what stays the same and what keeps changing.