Why'd it take until the mid 19th centuary to adopt elongated bullets for firearms?

It doesn't makes sense to me why it took so long for elongated, let alone conical, bullets to become popular for firearms. Especially since it seems like a simple idea common amongst other technologies. Spears are are long and thrown better with pointed tips. Arrows are long and fly better with pointed tips. The bodies of birds and fish are pointed which helps them move through the mediums of air and water. From what I've read on Wiki the English mathematician Benjamin Robbins found that elongated bullets traveled through the air easier than spherical in the early/mid 1700s. So why did it seemingly take the combined efforts of Delvigne, Tamisier, and Minié for the technology to be adopted?
 
Perhaps the manufacturing infrastructure for mass-production of rounds was not around yet?

I may be wrong, but I think most soldiers would cast their own bullets while on campaign with simple circular molds. I think if molds for elongated conical bullets can become common, but I don't think that guarantees that all cast bullets will be uniform in size and shape. With a ball, if it's much smaller than the barrel, you can just force it down with wadding, and the shape doesn't need to be precise.

Also, the manufacturing infrastructure for round bullets was already in place, in the form of shot towers. Obviously, manufacturing bullets of a different shape would require much different techniques, and as such, different infrastructure.
 
Manufacturing capability. Musket balls can be cast by anyone with a mold- Minie balls and their equivalent are a bit more complex and likely weren't feasible to manufacture in quantity until the development of centralised factories for mass production.
 
Manufacturing capability. Musket balls can be cast by anyone with a mold- Minie balls and their equivalent are a bit more complex and likely weren't feasible to manufacture in quantity until the development of centralised factories for mass production.

Also to note, hand-casting of Minie balls can result in more duds than usable bullets. I've tried it before with a quite good mold, but many-times the bullets would come out looking good but useless in practice.

Casting balls, on the other hand, doesn't require any sort of precision at all. You can shove down whatever ball down the barrel with wadding.
 
Also to note, hand-casting of Minie balls can result in more duds than usable bullets. I've tried it before with a quite good mold, but many-times the bullets would come out looking good but useless in practice.

Casting balls, on the other hand, doesn't require any sort of precision at all. You can shove down whatever ball down the barrel with wadding.
What made them useless?
 
I think it was just technological, up until at least the Napoleonic wars a lot of firearms were muzzle loaded or front loaded, simplicity really. Until the invention of breech-loaders it just made more sense and practicality to keep it simple with slight modifications ie minie balls
 
What made them useless?

Due to gas release, temperature irregularities between molten metal and mold, and many other factors, the bullets would very commonly come out irregularly shaped, some would shrink a lot after cooling, and so on.

The way to get the best castings would be to heat up the mold to a certain temperature. But soldiers on campaign would probably not have access to a forge or degassing agents and such,
 
Due to gas release, temperature irregularities between molten metal and mold, and many other factors, the bullets would very commonly come out irregularly shaped, some would shrink a lot after cooling, and so on.

The way to get the best castings would be to heat up the mold to a certain temperature. But soldiers on campaign would probably not have access to a forge or degassing agents and such,

Couldn't heating the mold over the same fire you melt the lead with work?
 
Couldn't heating the mold over the same fire you melt the lead with work?

Would be hard to get it heated evenly without a coal forge, in my experience.

But despite that, I think it's possible for molds for differently shaped bullets to be disseminated to soldiers. I base this on the idea that small-scale production of rifled bullets happened this way in places like the old west. But I think mass manufacture of these bullets would come much later.
 
It was only in the mid-19th century that armies started to use rifled weapons as standard issue - and they needed a means of use that conscripts could easily adopt to. There was no call for elongated bullets before this, as most soldiers used smoothbores.

Potential POD: the British army adopts the Norton/Greener bullet types in the 1820s or 1830s, instead of opting for the belted bullets used in the Brunswick Rifle.

This could have shifted adaptation of conical bullets to some twenty tears earlier.
 
Minie type balls could have been produced earlier than OTL however the cost of rifling before the 19th century was very high and there is also the issue of the metallurgy of the barrels. OTL it took sometime after rifles became standard issue before tactics changes to accommodate greater range and accuracy. Also, given issues with flintlocks, rifles as standard before percussion caps are unlikely to be useful.
 
Minie type balls could have been produced earlier than OTL however the cost of rifling before the 19th century was very high and there is also the issue of the metallurgy of the barrels. OTL it took sometime after rifles became standard issue before tactics changes to accommodate greater range and accuracy. Also, given issues with flintlocks, rifles as standard before percussion caps are unlikely to be useful.

Obviously you're right generally speaking, but keep in mind that a well- tuned flintlock is at least as good as a percussion rifle/rifled musket, and that the ignition is actually faster. oddly enough a wheel-lock is faster still.
In the military sense it is indeed unlikely.
 
Obviously, elongated bullets are not really useful until rifled weapons became widely adopted. Producing great numbers of rifled barrels is more expensive than making smooth-bore tubes. Smooth-bore tubes are also easier to clean and maintain. I think these are the main reasons rifles remained a specialized weapon for quite some time, with muskets arming the majority of troops.

Elongated solid bullets weren't practical for the large-bore muzzle-loading rifles. A long, completely solid lead slug of, say, .58 caliber is too heavy to carry easily in quantity, and won't have very good range without much larger propellant charges, which would require much thicker, much heavier barrels.

Further, without the expandable hollow in the tail, the only way of engaging the rifling would be to drive it into the muzzle and all the way down the barrel, a rather slow process (breech-loaders can force the jacketed round into the rifling at the breech end).

I figure the relatively short Minie-type projectile is the best thing available until small-bore breech-loaders were developed. And I doubt small-bore military rifles were very practical until a better propellant than black powder came along, and until manufacturing processes could produce uniformly-sized bullets with thin jacketing in great quantity.
 
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Obviously, elongated bullets are not really useful until rifled weapons became widely adopted. Producing great numbers of rifled barrels is more expensive than making smooth-bore tubes. Smooth-bore tubes are also easier to clean and maintain. I think these are the main reasons rifles remained a specialized weapon for quite some time, with muskets arming the majority of troops.

Elongated solid bullets weren't practical for the large-bore muzzle-loading rifles. A long, completely solid lead slug of, say, .58 caliber is too heavy to carry easily in quantity, and won't have very good range without much larger propellant charges, which would require much thicker, much heavier barrels.

Further, without the expandable hollow in the tail, the only way of engaging the rifling would be to drive it into the muzzle and all the way down the barrel, a rather slow process (breech-loaders can force the jacketed round into the rifling at the breech end).

I figure the relatively short Minie-type projectile is the best thing available until small-bore breech-loaders were developed. And I doubt small-bore military rifles were very practical until a better propellant than black powder came along, and until manufacturing processes could produce uniformly-sized bullets with thin jacketing in great quantity.

I wonder if it could be related to impact: a round bullet was doing more damages, while the elongated one would go threw too easily. Of course, it would depend of the target and the purpose of the shot. Gerard.
 
Although round musket balls did cause grievous wounds due to the sheer mass & momentum, from what I've read the wounds inflected by Minne balls were even worst. Somehow between the sectional density, angular momentum, and velocity a ballistic sweet spot was reached that made notedly larger wound cavities. This was mentioned by many surgeons on both sides of the ACW.
 
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