page_title: Casimir Lefaucheux
hierarchical_section_title: Casimir Lefaucheux
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of French gunsmith Casimir Lefaucheux by an unknown photographer on an unknown date circa 1830-35.
context_page_description: Casimir Lefaucheux was a French gunsmith. He was born in Bonnétable and died in Paris.
  Casimir Lefaucheux obtained his first patent in 1827. In 1832, he completed a drop-barrel sporting gun with paper-cased cartridges.
  Lefaucheux is credited with the invention of one of the first efficient self-contained cartridge systems in 1836, featuring a pin-fire mechanism. This followed the pioneering work of Jean Samuel Pauly in 1808-1812. The Lefaucheux cartridge had a conical bullet, a cardboard powder tube, and a copper base that incorporated a primer pellet. Lefaucheux thus proposed one of the first practical breech-loading weapons.
  In 1846, the Lefaucheux system was improved upon by Benjamin Houllier, who introduced an entirely metallic cartridge of copper brass.
  In 1858, the Lefaucheux pistolet-revolver became the first metallic-cartridge revolver to be adopted by a national government, becoming the standard sidearm of the French Navy.
  It is thought likely that the revolver with which Vincent van Gogh fatally shot himself in a field in 1890 was a 7mm Lefaucheux à broche; the pistol was found, extremely corroded, in about 1960 and is on display at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
context_section_description: Casimir Lefaucheux (26 January 1802 – 9 August 1852) was a French gunsmith. He was born in Bonnétable and died in Paris.
  Casimir Lefaucheux obtained his first patent in 1827. In 1832, he completed a drop-barrel sporting gun with paper-cased cartridges.
  Lefaucheux is credited with the invention of one of the first efficient self-contained cartridge systems in 1836, featuring a pin-fire mechanism. This followed the pioneering work of Jean Samuel Pauly in 1808-1812. The Lefaucheux cartridge had a conical bullet, a cardboard powder tube, and a copper base that incorporated a primer pellet. Lefaucheux thus proposed one of the first practical breech-loading weapons.
  In 1846, the Lefaucheux system was improved upon by Benjamin Houllier, who introduced an entirely metallic cartridge of copper brass.
  In 1858, the Lefaucheux pistolet-revolver became the first metallic-cartridge revolver to be adopted by a national government, becoming the standard sidearm of the French Navy.
  It is thought likely that the revolver with which Vincent van Gogh fatally shot himself in a field in 1890 was a 7mm Lefaucheux à broche; the pistol was found, extremely corroded, in about 1960 and is on display at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
  A 7mm Lefaucheux revolver used by Paul Verlaine to shoot and wound Arthur Rimbaud in 1873 sold with a price of €435,000 at a 2016 Paris auction.
caption: Casimir Lefaucheux
exif: {"Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "GIMP 2.10.14", "Image DateTime": "2020:02:26 15:17:35", "Image ExifOffset": "136", "Thumbnail ImageWidth": "192", "Thumbnail ImageLength": "256", "Thumbnail BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail PhotometricInterpretation": "6", "Thumbnail SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "262", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "9082", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB"}