HomeA Brief History of Airguns
Reprinted from the Dynamit Nobel RWS Catalog #13
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The early history of airgunning is often shrouded in mystery and yet is as intriguing as any chronicle of centuries gone by. Although it is difficult to ascertain exactly when airguns were first produced in Europe, historians now believe the mid-1500's was the most likely period for their first appearance. Comparatively few specimens have survived the slow march of time, and most of those airguns which did now repose in arms museums throughout the world. We do know that since their earliest days, airguns were often shrouded in mystery and even reviled as tools of the Devil. Considering the fact that some airguns of bygone centuries were usually of very large caliber and almost as powerful as the firearms of the day - albeit without the deafening noise, flash and smoke - it is easy to understand why the airguns of the time were feared by many.
Most of the earliest airguns belonged to two different groups, those powered by spring loaded bellows and those utilizing precompressed air stored in a reservoir, which was either an integral part of the gun or attached to it. Bellows guns were generally intended for target shooting indoors. Although low powered, they were amazingly accurate at short ranges.
Pneumatic guns, on the other hand were relatively powerful. The technology of these guns gradually improved over the years and their use in hunting became fashionable among the European nobility. The fact that game as large as wild boar and stag was routinely taken by these early pneumatic guns demonstrates their amazing power. Their relatively quiet and efficient operation, coupled with their imperviousness to rain or snow, made them very desirable weapons indeed. For these reasons commoners were often forbidden from owning airguns.
In the late 1700's, powerful pneumatic guns even found their way into the ranks of the military. The Austrian Army had an entire regiment armed with .44 caliber repeating air rifles. All surviving accounts indicate that the Austrians used those airguns with deadly effectiveness against Napoleon's army. So feared, any Austrian soldier captured with an air rifle was summarily executed as an assassin!
On out own continent, the records of the Lewis and Clark expedition show that an airgun was taken along and the Indians called it "the smokeless thunder stick". Early airguns production in the United States centered around the "gallery gun", a relatively low powered gun utilizing a spring piston power plant. These guns flourished during the period immediately following our Civil War and were used mainly for shooting at paper targets indoors. As the 19th century came to a close, the calibers of airguns of both America and Europe had been scaled down considerably.
The 20th century witnessed tremendous strides in the field of adult airguns, especially since the end of WWII. Many German factories turned to airgun manufacturing after firearms production was prohibited by the occupying Allies. The rest has been the creation of a major new industry which claims a significant share of world-wide shooting sports today. The erroneous concept of airguns being mere toys has been fostered by years of exposure to the ubiquitous BB gun; however, word of mouth and the fact that airgunning is now an Olympic sport are rapidly causing this image to disappear. The ultrasophisticated recoilless match airguns, capable of single hole precision at 10 meters, can hardly be called "toys". The 1984 Olympic Games featured airgunning for the first time, a historic and dramatic indication of the importance of ariguns in today's recreational shooting. Likewise, air rifles capable of shooting .177 caliber pellets at 1000+ feet per second have vaulted the airgun into the serious sporting arms class.
Adult airguns have finally become truly universal, a shooting sport that can be enjoyed by anyone, anywhere - a far cry from their murky, uncertain beginnings a few short centuries ago.
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