The Word's Oldest Known surviving gun, ca. 1390-1410, fitted with a lock mechanism!
The Word's Oldest Known surviving gun, ca. 1390-1410,
fitted with the earliest tinderlock mechanism,
and preserved in
The Michael Trömner Collection
Reattached here find an important contemporary and dated illustration.
The manuscript containing it is dated 1410, and the gun is almost identical to the author's sample, showing excaclty the same proportions, the very same sleeve of thin iron uniting the oaken tiller stock with the short octagonal barrel; even the slanted rear end of the stock is the same on both the drawing and the author's gun.
The illustration does not yet depict a lock mechanism, or a barrel hook.
Both were obviously not known by 1410, and are, as stated, working time technical amendments on the existing gun as well.
As stated formerly, hooks do not show up in contemporary illustrations before ca. 1430-40:
...
Michael Trömner
Rebenstr. 9
93326 Abensberg
Germany
All photos copyrighted by the author.
Last edited by Matchlock; 13th September 2014 at 09:30 PM.
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