Minié ball was not invented earlier

I wonder why the Minié ball or at least a sperical ball which acted with the same priciple, was invented only around 1848 and not, let say, a century eralier.
I do not understand this since a bullet looks much easier to me than some cumbersome device as a Puckle gun form 1718. Since this reapeating gun could also fire square bullets for non christians I asume the man did not know much of what he was doiing.
While I can immagine that a hunter, from Europe or North Amrica, which favorit weapon of choice was a rifle, in use since the early 17th century, was complete frustrated of the time and effort it took to load his rifle and in the prosses of ramming his not fitting round ball, broke his ramrot, dammaged his barrel and in the end missed his game.
When you cast lead bullets with a flat sulface form one side a shrink hole develop, which is almost the same as the hole of predessors, and the main principle of the Minie ball. It should be possible to invent a bullet like this and its advantages by acident.
So does any body have athought about this?

I have more quations but they come later.
 
In an old ATL, I speculated on a Minie ball analogue being developed as part of a gun type firing metal darts. This was in a preindustrial setting where people were by and large convinced that the arrowhead was what made the buillet penetrate armour and skin, and added a lead weight to increase punch and lock the barrel. In the process, they made one end of it hollow in order to improve its performance catching gas (it wouldn't, but they have no way of knowing that). The result is a much improved performance of the gun. Of course they still put in the iron darts.

The problem is, I suspect, that it's an easy technical solution, but one that requires lots of patient observation of the behaviour of bullets and expanding gases. I'm not sure that's plausible pre-scientific revolution.
 
In an old ATL, I speculated on a Minie ball analogue being developed as part of a gun type firing metal darts. This was in a preindustrial setting where people were by and large convinced that the arrowhead was what made the buillet penetrate armour and skin, and added a lead weight to increase punch and lock the barrel. In the process, they made one end of it hollow in order to improve its performance catching gas (it wouldn't, but they have no way of knowing that). The result is a much improved performance of the gun. Of course they still put in the iron darts.

The problem is, I suspect, that it's an easy technical solution, but one that requires lots of patient observation of the behaviour of bullets and expanding gases. I'm not sure that's plausible pre-scientific revolution.

I think Mr Minie and his predesessors did not had the observation tools either. The observatiosn the poeple had was that it was earier to load and could had an increase range.

I thionk it is a simple solotuin and I just wonder why it took so long. As example complex wheel lock pistols where in use since the 2nd halve of the 16ht century. I just wonder why a hunter did not discovered this type of bullets and their increased range by accident whyle molding his bullets in an incorrect way, ie not round but spherical.
 
I think Mr Minie and his predesessors did not had the observation tools either. The observatiosn the poeple had was that it was earier to load and could had an increase range.

I thionk it is a simple solotuin and I just wonder why it took so long. As example complex wheel lock pistols where in use since the 2nd halve of the 16ht century. I just wonder why a hunter did not discovered this type of bullets and their increased range by accident whyle molding his bullets in an incorrect way, ie not round but spherical.

The problem is that you have to know what you want to achieve. I'm not sure you can accidentally create a working Minie ball, and in order to produce one you'd have to know that lead balls are significantly deformed by powder gas, which you'd have to observe somehow. Minie came up with it because contemporaries were trying manually deformed conical bullets and observed they got squeezed into the grooves even if they were not hammered home. Maybe a development from breechloaders?
 
good points, actually casting a the shape of a modern bullet is easier than casting a lead ball.

Lead balls weren't cast, at least not in mass production. Lead is melted at the top of a tall tower (the shot tower), poured through a grid with holes of the desired calibre and the resultant droplets are pulled into a spherical shape by surface tension and cooled as they fall until they land in a water basin which cools them the rest of the way. It's actually a much quicker method than attempting to cast an equivalent number by hand and probably why it took a while to investigate alternative designs.
 
Lead balls weren't cast, at least not in mass production. Lead is melted at the top of a tall tower (the shot tower), poured through a grid with holes of the desired calibre and the resultant droplets are pulled into a spherical shape by surface tension and cooled as they fall until they land in a water basin which cools them the rest of the way. It's actually a much quicker method than attempting to cast an equivalent number by hand and probably why it took a while to investigate alternative designs.
You are aware that shot towers were invented only in the late 18th century? In the centuries before lead balls were usually cast.
 
It was just a thought.
I imagined an North Amercan hunter who discovers that spherical bullits with a shrink hole at one side (this is important) have a larger range than the round balls. Over time he discover that it this type of bullets do not need extra cloth to have a good fit and thus makes his "Kentucky" type of rifle easier and faster to load.
He tells his mates of his discovery or technique and so forth the spherical ball will spread.
 
makes his "Kentucky" type of rifle easier and faster to load.
Again, are you sure about that? I've definitely read somewhere that the shape of Minie "balls" made ramming them home slower than loading with the older-style [spherical] balls...
 
Again, are you sure about that? I've definitely read somewhere that the shape of Minie "balls" made ramming them home slower than loading with the older-style [spherical] balls...

Minie balls were slower to load that round balls in a smoothbore musket because you had to hold them the right way up and slide them in rather than allow them to roll down the barrel. But the point was that you loaded them into a rifle, and the alternative there was hammering a super-calibre round ball down the barrel, deforming it in the process. That took a long time.

What has me wondering is whether a merely flawed bullet would be dented enough to expand on firing. Minie bullets had almost hemispherical indentations.
 
Minie balls were slower to load that round balls in a smoothbore musket because you had to hold them the right way up and slide them in rather than allow them to roll down the barrel. But the point was that you loaded them into a rifle, and the alternative there was hammering a super-calibre round ball down the barrel, deforming it in the process. That took a long time.
Ah, okay. Thank you for the explanation.
 
Minie balls were slower to load that round balls in a smoothbore musket because you had to hold them the right way up and slide them in rather than allow them to roll down the barrel. But the point was that you loaded them into a rifle, and the alternative there was hammering a super-calibre round ball down the barrel, deforming it in the process. That took a long time.

What has me wondering is whether a merely flawed bullet would be dented enough to expand on firing. Minie bullets had almost hemispherical indentations.

The important thing really, is that the minie ball only makes sense in a rifle.

It would thus only make a peripheral change to history since it would be restricted to the few rifle/jaeger type specialist units that already use rifles.

In order to use a rifle effectively, you need to be taught marksmanship and spend some time on a range firing off quantities rather expensive ammunition. Each year, your riflemen have to have some top-up range time to keep their skills up to date.

In this day when nitrates are a rare commodity, manufactured from human and animal excrement, gunpowder is a relatively scarce and hence expensive commodity. The discovery of the Chilean guano island deposits in the 19th century helped this, for those who controlled the trade routes of course. but up to the Napoleonic era, you did not expend gunpowder needlessly. e.g. some Royal Navy captains believed in gunnery practice with live ammunition and not just dumb show gun drill - this had to be done with privately purchased barrels of powder.

Jaegers operated in loose order as light troops - which required more initiative and training for these guys, and also a greater quantity of (expensive) officers and NCOs to supervise such a unit as compared to a line musketeer unit. Thus they were rare because they were expensive to train and maintain.

Riflemen were a useful thing to have, but generally did not prove a decisive arm - or the armies of the day would have scaled up the fraction of troops so equipped. Riflemen needed a clear line of sight to the target, and fired slowly (if more accurately shot by shot). Good for bothering an enemy battery that deployed too close to them perhaps, or for whittling down a musketeer unit which did not/temporarily could not do the sensible thing in opposition to them (close to short range and ripple off a few rapid volleys into the gunsmoke, then close with the bayonet).

Line Musketeers did not have to fire any live ammo whatsoever in order to keep their skills up. All these need is to be thoroughly trained in the motions of loading, and holding the piece level to discharge it on command once that process is complete. They only had to be trained in close order drill in tight formations that required a reasonably small number of officers and NCOs to manoeuvre the massed units about. A musketeer battalion was basically a giant shotgun, really. In battlefields wreathed by gunpowder smoke, with visibility less than 100 yards often enough, the musketeer units made perfectly good sense since their ability to put out a hail of shot into a "beaten zone" at 3 rounds to the riflemen's one tended to be decisive on the battlefield of the day.

A more useful technology to improve your musketeers (and jaegers too) would be an earlier introduction of the percussion cap. That reduces the motions to load your firelock by about half, does not require any priming of the pan with part of the charge etc, and once loaded it's relatively rainproof compared to a flintlock. The percussion cap lock also is more reliable, so you would produce less misfires per volley. You might gain one or one and a half shots per minute over opposing flintlock musketeers perhaps, which would help a lot when the point of musketeers is to put loads of lead downrange as fast as you can.

In fact I'd say that the use of the widespread use of the percussion cap in the ACW period was perhaps more important than rifling and the minie ball part of the "rifle musket" combination. After all - most conscripts in the ACW did no range training, just "by the motions" dry loading drills in camp, and only ever saw their first live rounds on the day of their first actual battle. Learning to aim the thing was thus done "on the job", as it were.

Add the American preferred load of "Buck and ball" to your smoothbores (3-4 buckshot as well as the ball) in the European armies and you probably have made your musketeers 40-50% more effective per unit of time. All that without any bothersome (and costly) individual marksmanship training or any need to buy in rifles that cost perhaps 4-5 times what the smoothbore musket would :D!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_and_ball - see esp. paragraph beginning "Claud E. Fuller"
 
was the technology to make percussion caps around that much earlier than in OTL though? The minie ball is a pretty simple thing to make, well within the capabilities of earlier times. You make a pretty good case as to why it wouldn't have been all that useful, but it could have been invented earlier...
 
was the technology to make percussion caps around that much earlier than in OTL though? The minie ball is a pretty simple thing to make, well within the capabilities of earlier times. You make a pretty good case as to why it wouldn't have been all that useful, but it could have been invented earlier...

If you add a minie ball type to your flintlock equipped jaegers then you probably speed up loading rate by 50% or so over a patched ball.

That is probably not that significant given the time required in the aiming process - the rifleman is more interested in hitting the target than banging out as many rounds as possible after all.

The minie ball is a better ballistic solution than the round ball, and that is where you would score. More hits at normal ranges, and perhaps add 100-200 yards to the maximum range where you could "annoy" an enemy.

Its also a heavier "hitter", so a hunter coming into regular contact with large game or bears etc might appreciate the round!.

So, nice to have most likely, but not an overwhelming tactical innovation that will drastically change the Napoleonic battlefield.
 

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A brass cartridge and breech loading are the really big changes after the percussion cap.

As far as I can tell, a percussion ignited explosive primer could have been found much earlier, given some risk taking and unlikely pure research.
 
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Andy42 said:
The important thing really, is that the minie ball only makes sense in a rifle.
Correct. Which means, to invent it earlier, you need earlier development of accurate tools for rifling.

That has enormous implications: it means you can build condensing steam engines, one of Watt's major improvements.
 
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