10 weapons cataloged
Every firearm in existence descends from a bamboo tube packed with gunpowder and strapped to a spear. The fire lance appeared in 10th-century China, and within nine centuries its descendants had made every other weapon category on this poster either obsolete or ceremonial. The progression from fire lance to hand cannon to matchlock to flintlock to percussion cap to cartridge is not a story of sudden leaps. It's a slow, grinding march of incremental improvements, each one making the last generation of weapons just slightly less relevant.
The fire lance is the ancestor of all firearms. First documented in 10th-century China, it consisted of a bamboo or metal tube packed with gunpowder and attached to a spear. When ignited, it projected a jet of flame and shrapnel at close range while ...
The hand cannon is the earliest true firearm — a simple metal tube loaded with gunpowder and a projectile, ignited through a touch hole. Chinese bronze hand cannons from the 13th century are the oldest surviving examples. In Europe, hand cannons appe...
The arquebus was the first truly practical shoulder-fired gun. Using a matchlock mechanism — a slow-burning fuse clamped in a serpentine lever that was lowered into a flash pan — it could be aimed and fired by a single soldier with modest training. T...
The musket was the dominant infantry weapon for over three centuries, from the Spanish tercios of the 1500s to the Napoleonic Wars of the early 1800s. A smoothbore, muzzle-loading long gun firing a lead ball, the musket was inaccurate beyond 50–75 me...
The blunderbuss is a short, large-bore firearm with a distinctive flared muzzle, designed to fire a spreading charge of shot at close range. The flared barrel — contrary to popular belief — does not significantly spread the shot pattern, but it does ...
The single-shot pistol evolved from the wheellock and flintlock mechanisms of the 16th and 17th centuries. A compact, one-handed firearm that could be drawn and fired at close range, it transformed cavalry tactics and personal combat. Cavalrymen carr...
The multi-shot pistol — most famously the revolver — solved the single-shot pistol’s fatal limitation: the inability to fire more than once without reloading. Samuel Colt’s 1836 Patent Arms revolver, with its rotating cylinder holding five or six cha...
The semi-automatic pistol uses the energy of each fired cartridge to cycle the action, eject the spent case, and chamber a fresh round from a detachable magazine. Hugo Borchardt’s C-93 (1893) and Georg Luger’s Parabellum (1900) established the form. ...
The machine pistol is a compact, fully automatic firearm that bridges the gap between the pistol and the submachine gun. Capable of firing 900–1,200 rounds per minute, weapons like the Glock 18, Beretta 93R, and Stechkin APS sacrifice accuracy for ov...
The Personal Defense Weapon (PDW) is a relatively new category, designed to replace the pistol for military personnel who need more firepower than a handgun but cannot carry a full rifle. FN Herstal’s P90 (1990) and Heckler & Koch’s MP7 (2001) define...