[ Lindner's Improbable Revolver ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we have an extremely
cool firearm to take a look at.
Actually, this isn't quite a firearm,
this is a proof-of-concept model
from a guy named Edward Lindner.
And it is what could be best described perhaps as
a tubular magazine, self-priming, striker-fired, breech loading, percussion revolver.
It's quite the piece of machinery.
Now Edward Lindner was a German by birth, born in Prussia in 1819.
And he emigrated to the United States sometime in the early [1850s],
... where he proceeded to be really a very prolific firearms designer.
He would make 13 different firearms patents, this one coming in 1857.
Now what happens here is essentially when you cock the hammer,
(and by the way I said striker fired, this hammer isn't actually a hammer,
it's just a cocking ... lever actually),
when you operate the hammer here manually, it's going to perform six different operations.
Namely, it's going to load the cylinder from the tubular magazine.
It's going to rotate the cylinder with proper timing.
It's going to lock the cylinder.
It's going to automatically feed a percussion primer into place for firing.
It's going to unlock the cylinder after you fire.
And it's going to automatically eject the spent, fired percussion cap.
So this thing is set up to use
a combustible cartridge, which we'll take a look at in just a moment.
So it is caseless in essence, there's nothing to eject.
And what happens is you have a tube magazine down here
that can hold 9 of these cartridges, they're roughly .48 calibre.
You have a 6 shot cylinder, but you're actually only using 3 of the chambers in the cylinder.
It will feed a round in from the tube magazine,
which then rotates in three ... positions up to the top position in the barrel.
Where a percussion cap is loaded in place by the automatic primer feed, and then fired.
There's nothing left to extract or eject.
So when you cock the hammer after firing it simply repeats the process
until you have fired all the rounds in the tube.
This probably sounds rather complicated, so why don't we go ahead and take a closer look
at exactly how all of this clockwork is actually happening.
First off, let me point out that I've taken a couple of elements off here.
So there is a stock for this, but I want to be able to show you all the internals,
so we've taken the stock off.
There is also the side plate, which would normally screw right in here,
we've also taken that off so that we can show you all the internals.
And I said that this was a proof-of-concept model,
this is not capable of actually firing for two reasons.
First off, the striker here is not actually long enough to reach and detonate a percussion cap.
Almost certainly intentionally so that they could ... experiment
cycling the percussion cap feeder without accidentally firing caps and/or cartridges off.
Secondly, the barrel is held in place only by this set screw,
which would not survive the pressure of firing.
So this is intended, like I said, as a proof-of-concept model.
So what exactly are they proving? Well.
If we dig in here a little bit closer, we have our main spring in the back.
We have a trigger mechanism here underneath this rack and pinion.
The trigger is perfectly normal, not really anything fancy going on there,
unlike everything else on this gun.
We have a cocking lever here connected to a rack and pinion system down here.
So when I pull the hammer back,
it's going to push this rod forward. That's this, and out here.
Now what is that actually doing? That is the feeding mechanism.
So I have a follower that I have put out here.
When that rod goes forward it is,
in essence, going to pull the follower like that, until it snaps up.
And then when the gun is fired, this rod is going to go backward
which is going to pull the follower back and stuff one of these cartridges
all the way through this into the bottom chamber in the cylinder.
Then when you cock ... the hammer for the next round,
it's going to ... push the rod forward over the follower again.
And then when you fire a second time it pulls the follower back, and loads another cartridge in.
So that's how that element functions.
The cartridges are one inch long each, like I said, they're approximately .48 calibre.
These are dummy cartridges that are full of aquarium sand,
so don't worry, nothing's going to detonate here.
Inside the rest of the mechanism we have a couple of other things going on.
So this is our cylinder stop that is going to lock the cylinder in place.
And again, when the cocking lever goes backward,
you can see there is a lever right down here that is going to pull the cylinder stop out,
and allow the cylinder to rotate.
You have a striker, right here, that's going to go forward
when you fire to actually detonate a primer.
And you can see that's got a pivoting linkage on it.
So that the striker being attached sort of up on top here,
that top part can pivot up and down,
where the striker here is always going to remain horizontal going through the action.
Right in here we have what is essentially our magazine of percussion caps, of primers.
You feed that through this side.
So there's a little cover cap there, open that up.
There is a ... spiral spring inside here that's going to put tension on all of the percussion caps.
So you would need to wind that up from this side, load it in,
put the spring down on top of it then you can close the cover.
I believe that's our cap follower right there.
And the way that the percussion cap feed works essentially is when you pull the trigger,
the striker is going to go forward, it's going to strip off a percussion cap,
seat it on the nipple.
So there's one of them, it would actually seat it on the top chamber's percussion cap nipple.
And then immediately fire it.
So it's sort of like an open-bolt style of system, to use that analogy.
So this is at half-cock position now, and I can just lift that off,
and you can get a better view of the striker itself, and the cylinder lock.
And now let's go ahead and cock it the rest of the way.
I'll put that on,
and this is going to come all the way back to right there.
The cylinder is now firmly locked in position again.
Alright, so now that this is fully cocked,
when you pull the trigger a couple of things are going to happen simultaneously.
This going forward, powered by the main spring here, is going to pull the feed rod backward.
That's going to pull ... the follower and a cartridge back into the bottom chamber.
The striker here is going to fly forward.
It's going to strip a percussion cap out of the spiral percussion cap magazine here,
seat it on the nipple and immediately fire it.
And then you're basically going to be ready to re-cock the system,
and perform the other half of the operations.
So when we pull the trigger,
... basically the striker goes forward and the feed rod comes back simultaneously.
Now the system is de-cocked, ready to run the hammer, or cocking lever, again
to unlock the cylinder lock, rotate the cylinder, etc. etc.
Now it is also worth pointing out that Lindner envisioned having
a larger capacity than just this one magazine tube,
because he has actually cut two holes here
that line up with two of the other chambers in the cylinder.
And the idea is with a little modification it would be simple enough
to add two additional magazine tubes.
Now this and its partner here are after-market parts that were made
basically ... just like the thing's kind of set up to do this,
so let's make a couple of magazine tubes that would fit it, and kind of give you the idea.
So those can fit in there, and instead of this bracket holding just the one tube,
it would have had something like this holding all three.
We actually saw something vaguely similar to this
with the experimental three tube Henry rifle at the Cody Firearms Museum.
Now it's also important to point out that the capacity
is simply based on the length of the magazine tube,
which is essentially only ... limited by the length of the barrel.
So on a 15 inch barrel you could have a tube that would hold 15 cartridges,
since they are each an inch long.
If you make that a 30 inch barrel, in theory
there's no theoretical reason that you couldn't have a 30 round tube.
Or three 30 round tubes.
Or potentially, if you redesigned the barrel attachment here, maybe five tubes.
Or maybe you could make them interchangeable, there's
quite a lot of possibility built into this system.
Now, how much friction and weight,
and putting 50 or more cartridges, or 100 cartridges,
out on the end of this thing causes some other issues.
But mechanically, in theory, there's no reason it couldn't be done.
Clearly Lindner wanted to get some military contracts for a piece of hardware like this.
And in theory, it would have offered quite a lot of firepower in the 1850s.
We were barely starting to get single-shot breech loaders at that point,
much less this amount of firepower.
In theory, the way that this is sort of modular,
and can be increased in capacity with extra magazine tubes,
or, and I'm sure Lindner thought about this at some point,
developing these tubes so they could be pre-loaded and inserted into the gun as complete units.
You could have set up something like this on, say, a large carriage or artillery style mount,
with potentially hundreds of rounds of capacity.
Now could you actually make use of hundreds of rounds of
black-powder combustible-case ammunition before the amount of fouling in the gun
would cause it to cease functioning? Hard to say.
This, as far as we know, never got as far as an actual experimental fully functional model
that could go through any sort of endurance test.
And of course Lindner did not end up getting any military contracts for it.
The gun is, frankly, ridiculously complex,
and would have been ridiculously expensive to actually manufacture.
What Lindner was able to do successfully on a commercial scale
was a breech-loading musket conversion.
And I actually have a video on one of his carbine conversions.
So if you're interested you can take a look at that.
He would eventually move back to Germany,
where I believe the rest of his work was focused on those breech-loading conversions.
He passed away in 1870 in Germany.
As I said at the beginning, he has 13 different patents in his name
for firearms developments, and there are a couple of particularly notable ones.
It's worth specifically pointing out in 1865 one of his patents includes
the first actual use of the phrase "striker fired", that I'm aware of at least.
And in 1856 he had ... one of the very first patents,
again that I'm aware of at least, for a gas-operated rifle.
Which ... is interesting, it was a gas-operated system
where all the gas did was, essentially, pop a latch
that popped open the breech block on a breech-loading conversion.
So lots of interesting stuff to dig into with Lindner if you're interested,
but some of those other patents are stories for another day.
Hopefully you enjoyed this video.
This thing is fantastically cool, and another example of how creative people
were coming up with some really significant firepower systems
... much earlier than most people would have expected.
Thanks for watching.