HISTORY OF THE SPRINGFIELD ARMORY
Springfield Armory was established in Springfield, Massachusetts, by the U.S. Congress in 1794 and had an illustrious history. Initially starting with smoothbore muskets, they soon moved on to rifles, with the Armory producing more than 840 000 rifled muskets in .58 calibre between 1858 and 1865. After the American Civil War (1861-1865), it became clear that the way forward was to adopt a self-contained metallic cartridge. From 1865 to 1873, the Armory experimented with different ways of converting muzzle-loading muskets into breech-loading rifles.
Erskine Allin, then master armourer at Springfield Armory, was given the task of designing a method of conversion. He came up with a very elegant and strong solution – a breechblock hinged to the top of an altered musket barrel. To operate the rifle, the user half-cocked the external, exposed hammer and pushed upwards on a thumb latch that unlocked the swinging breechblock, flipping it forward along the top of the barrel, thus exposing the rifle chamber. A single cartridge could then be inserted, the block closed, the hammer pulled to full-cock, and the rifle aimed and
