Aug 3, 2020
Winchester 1866 Prototype Musket
The mid-1860s found the Winchester Arms Company looking to improve the Henry Repeating Rifle. A series of design improvements by the company's chief engineer, Nelson King, led to one of Winchester's most important rifles - the Model 1866.
In this video we examine a prototype 'musket' with an experimental loading gate quite different from the one eventually seen on production models. The prototype is a really interesting example of iterative engineering.
You can read my in-depth article on the prototype here.