Winchester rifle
series of lever-action repeating rifle
A Winchester rifle is any of a series of lever-action repeating rifles manufactured by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Developed from the 1860 Henry rifle, Winchester rifles were among the earliest repeaters. The Model 1873 was particularly successful, being marketed by the manufacturer as "The Gun That Won the West".
Predecessors
Early designs
In 1848, Walter Hunt of New York patented his "Volition Repeating Rifle" incorporating a tubular magazine, which was operated by two levers and complex linkages. The Hunt rifle fired what he called the "Rocket Ball", an early form of caseless ammunition in which the powder charge was contained in the bullet's hollow base.
Hunt's design was fragile and unworkable but in 1849, Lewis Jennings purchased the Hunt patents and developed a functioning, if still complex, rifle. This version was produced in small numbers by Robbins & Lawrence of Windsor, Vermont, until 1852.
Volcanic arms
Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson of Norwich, Connecticut, acquired the Jennings patent from Robbins & Lawrence, as well as shop foreman Benjamin Tyler Henry.
Smith made several improvements to the Jennings design, and in 1855 Smith and Wesson together with several investors formed a corporation, the Volcanic Repeating Arms Company, to manufacture Smith's modification of the Hunt-Jennings, the Volcanic lever-action pistol and rifle. Its largest stockholder was Oliver Winchester.
“Winchester rifle” enters the record as series of lever-action repeating rifle. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Winchester, rifle and series can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Winchester rifle” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.