page_title: Bullet
section_title: Pointed bullets
hierarchical_section_title: Bullet / History / Pointed bullets
caption_attribution_description: English: Eratic_bullet_trajectory
context_page_description: A bullet is a projectile and a component of firearm ammunition that is expelled from a gun barrel during shooting. The term is from Middle French and originated as the diminutive of the word boulle, which means "small ball". Bullets are made of a variety of materials such as copper, lead, steel, polymer, rubber and even wax. They are available either singly, as in muzzleloading and cap and ball firearms, or as components of paper cartridges, but much more commonly in the form of metallic cartridges. Bullets are made in various shapes and constructions depending on the intended applications, including specialized functions such as hunting, target shooting, training and combat.
  Although the word bullet is often used in colloquial language to refer to a cartridge round, a bullet is not a cartridge but rather a component of one. A round of ammunition cartridge is a combination package of the bullet, the case, the propellant and the primer. This use of the term bullet when intending to describe a cartridge often leads to confusion when the components of a cartridge are specifically referred to.
context_section_description: Delvigne continued to develop bullet design and by 1830 had started to develop cylindro-conical bullets. His bullet designs were improved by Francois Tamisier with the addition of "ball grooves" which are known as "cannelures",  these moved the resistance of air behind the center of gravity of the bullet. 
  Tamisier also developed progressive rifling. The rifle grooves were deeper toward the breech, becoming shallower as they progressed toward the muzzle. This causes the bullet to be progressively molded into the grooves which increases range and accuracy. 
  The Thouvenin rifle barrel has a forcing plug in the breech of the barrel to mold the bullet into the rifling with the use of a special ramrod. While successful in increasing accuracy it was extremely hard to clean. These improvements were the basis for the development of the Minié ball.
  Among the first pointed or "conical" bullets were those designed by Captain John Norton of the British Army in 1832. Norton's bullet had a hollow base made of lotus pith that, on firing, expanded under pressure to engage with a barrel's rifling. The British Board of Ordnance rejected it because spherical bullets had been in use for the previous 300 years.
  Renowned English gunsmith William Greener invented the Greener bullet in 1836. Greener fitted the hollow base of an oval bullet with a wooden plug that more reliably forced the base of the bullet to expand and catch the rifling. Tests proved that Greener's bullet was extremely effective, but the military rejected it because, being two parts, they judged it as too complicated to produce.
  The soft lead Minié ball was first introduced in 1847 by Claude-Étienne Minié, a captain in the French Army. It was another improvement of the work done by Delvigne. As designed by Minié, the bullet was conical in shape with a hollow cavity in the rear, which was fitted with a small iron cap instead of a wooden plug. When fired, the iron cap forced itself into the hollow cavity at the rear of the bullet, thus expanding the sides of the bullet to grip and engage the rifling. In 1851, the British adopted the Minié ball for their 702-inch Pattern 1851 Minié rifle. In 1855, James Burton, a machinist at the US Armory at Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, improved the Minié ball further by eliminating the metal cup in the bottom of the bullet. The Minié ball first saw widespread use in the Crimean War (1853-1856). Roughly 90% of the battlefield casualties in the American Civil War (1861-1865) were caused by Minié balls fired from rifled muskets.
  A similar bullet called the Nessler ball was also developed for smoothbore muskets.
  Between 1854 and 1857, Sir Joseph Whitworth conducted a long series of rifle experiments, and proved, among other points, the advantages of a smaller bore and, in particular, of an elongated bullet. The Whitworth bullet was made to fit the grooves of the rifle mechanically. The Whitworth rifle was never adopted by the government, although it was used extensively for match purposes and target practice between 1857 and 1866, when it was gradually superseded by Metford's.
  In 1861 W.B. Chace approached President Abraham Lincoln with an improved ball design for muskets. In firing over the Potomac river where the Chace ball and the round ball were alternated Lincoln observed that the Chace design carried a third or more farther fired at the same elevation. Although Lincoln recommended testing, it never took place.
  About 1862 and later, W. E. Metford carried out an exhaustive series of experiments on bullets and rifling, and invented the important system of light rifling with increasing spiral, and a hardened bullet. The combined result was that, in December 1888, the Lee–Metford small-bore (0.303", 7.70 mm) rifle, Mark I, was finally adopted for the British army. The Lee–Metford was the predecessor of the Lee–Enfield.
caption: Before Tamisier's invention, the orientation of a cylindro-conical bullet tended to remain along its inertial axis, progressively setting it against its trajectory and increasingly meeting air resistance, which rendered the bullet's movement erratic
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