Girardoni air rifle
18th century Austrian airgun
The Girardoni air rifle is one of the first repeating rifles, designed by Ladin artisan watchmaker and gunsmith Bartolomeo Girardoni in Austria circa 1779. Girardoni made both customary flintlocks and the innovative air guns, called Windbüchse ("wind rifle" in German).
One of the air rifle's more famous associations is its use on the Lewis and Clark Expedition to explore and map the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.
Biography
Bartolomeo Girardoni was born 30 May 1744 in Cortina d'Ampezzo, a town populated by Ladins and part of the County of Tyrol and Austria until after World War I.
In early 1779, Austrian Field Marshal Franz Moritz von Lacy became aware of Girardoni's repeating rifle and wrote a positive report to Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor. After some tests, Lacy proposed that he should make 1,000 flintlock rifles and 500 air guns, to be delivered to Wenzel Joseph von Colloredo. In December 1779, accompanied by his family, his assistant Franz Colli and two workers, Girardoni moved to Penzing near Vienna. Having lost his left hand in a gun accident, he made himself an iron hand prosthesis. In his spare time, he continued to make individual pocket watches, while for rifle production, he had to organize some sort of mass production.
Until 1784, 111 flintlocks and 274 air guns were made, and the army was not satisfied with the output. Relieved of flintlock duties, he focused on air rifles and the necessary additional equipment, with each worker making specific parts that were assembled by him.
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This entry incorporates text from “Girardoni air 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.