alternatehistory.com

http://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/the-girandoni-air-rifle/

At the very same time that the Austrian army was struggling to keep the Girandonis in repair, an American inventor, Eli Whitney (1765-1825) was trying to manufacture muskets with moving parts machined so precisely that they would be “interchangeable” between weapons of the same type. It was a revolutionary idea in a world where every complex mechanism was individually filed and ground to fit. The development of precision machine tools and gauges in the early 19th century had not progressed far enough to make Whitney’s dream a reality until after his death. If Girandoni’s brilliant design had connected with Whitney’s interchangeable parts, armies equipped with mass-produced smokeless magazine rifles would have been quickly forced to adapt their tactics and doctrine, and subsequent history might have taken a very different path.

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