Jean Samuel Pauly

[KK20]

I meant to post this on the 13 of April as it was his Birthday but I got busy and time ran away ( was caught up in celebrating a traditional new year of 5120)

The First Cartridge; A History of Jean Samuel Pauly and His Inventions
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"Whilst in Paris, Pauly had maintained contact with the weapon manufacturer of Saint-Étienne; using the title "Colonel Jean Samuel Pauly", he established a gunsmith workshop where he designed an automatic bridge and developed mercury fulminate platina. In 1808, in association with French gunsmith François Prélat, Pauly created the first fully self-contained cartridges; these incorporated a copper base with integrated potassium chlorate primer powder (the major innovation of Pauly), a round bullet and either brass or paper casing. Unlike later cartridges, the case walls didn't provide obturation as the cartridge was loaded through the breech and fired with a needle or a pin; this needle-activated central-fire breech-loading gun would become a major feature of firearms thereafter, and in 1809 Pauly employed the German Johann Nikolaus von Dreyse who would later become the inventor of the famous Dreyse rifle. The corresponding firearm was also developed by Pauly[6], who made an improved version which was protected by a patent on 29 September 1812, and the cartridge was further improved by the French gunsmith Casimir Lefaucheux in 1836. It is reported that Napoleon himself said of Pauly's weapons:
"Inventions that precede their time remain untapped until general knowledge has reached the same level."



https://freemycollection.com/?p=784&...his-inventions

Cartridges that contained the projectile and powder all in one piece had been around for awhile. Pauly took this idea and made it even better. Rather than having to have a separate ignition source such as a percussion cap that a hammer hit or a flint that struck metal like the other guns of the day had, Pauly designed this cartridge to have a slot on the base to put a priming compound that would be hit by a small needle. His design mentioned that the compound could be held in place by pasting a small paper over it or a bit of wax.