Ethnographic Arms & Armour - View Single Post - How late 15th to mid 16th century guns were aimed, in historic illustrations

RDGAC · 5th December 2010, 10:32 AM

That's actually a very good point, 'nando. (Damnit, I always want to type "Ferd" when I address you, for some reason.) And another thought occurs to me: without any form of sight, one really just peers along the tube, gets a rough idea of where one's gun is pointing, and lets fly. Fine in a military context, but not so good when shooting individually.

Obviously, in a pitched gunnery battle, it's rate of fire and volume of lead in the air that counts. But when hunting, say, or practising shooting, you really need to have at least some idea of your aim. Given that this period - the 15th and 16th Centuries - was really that of the evolution of the gun into something approaching its modern shape, I suggest that these sights were put on guns for two reasons, primarily:

1) The limitations of these guns were perhaps not fully appreciated. They were changing fairly constantly, and often fairly swiftly (by the standard of the day); in the absence of detailed scientific knowledge, and with any corpus of experience being continually challenged by new developments and designs, early gunsmiths and their customers didn't really know enough about their weapons' internal ballistics.

2) Even among those who did have a fair understanding of guns, there was an impulse to provide sights for a variety of reasons. Sights cost money; along with decoration, they could be used as a means of proclaiming wealth. They encouraged better shooting, even if the internal ballistics of the gun did nothing to help out. And there was at least some chance that they could be useful in giving one a better shot; at fifty years, say, the chances of hitting your man-sized target go up to nearly 100%.

5th December 2010, 10:32 AM	#55
RDGAC Member Join Date: Mar 2010 Location: York, UK Posts: 167	That's actually a very good point, 'nando. (Damnit, I always want to type "Ferd" when I address you, for some reason.) And another thought occurs to me: without any form of sight, one really just peers along the tube, gets a rough idea of where one's gun is pointing, and lets fly. Fine in a military context, but not so good when shooting individually. Obviously, in a pitched gunnery battle, it's rate of fire and volume of lead in the air that counts. But when hunting, say, or practising shooting, you really need to have at least some idea of your aim. Given that this period - the 15th and 16th Centuries - was really that of the evolution of the gun into something approaching its modern shape, I suggest that these sights were put on guns for two reasons, primarily: 1) The limitations of these guns were perhaps not fully appreciated. They were changing fairly constantly, and often fairly swiftly (by the standard of the day); in the absence of detailed scientific knowledge, and with any corpus of experience being continually challenged by new developments and designs, early gunsmiths and their customers didn't really know enough about their weapons' internal ballistics. 2) Even among those who did have a fair understanding of guns, there was an impulse to provide sights for a variety of reasons. Sights cost money; along with decoration, they could be used as a means of proclaiming wealth. They encouraged better shooting, even if the internal ballistics of the gun did nothing to help out. And there was at least some chance that they could be useful in giving one a better shot; at fifty years, say, the chances of hitting your man-sized target go up to nearly 100%.