Talk:Minié ball

Naming

I saw that this article was moved to add the accent. I want to move it back.

While the inventor's name was "Minié," my experience is that American usage is ovewhelmingly "minnie ball" or "minie ball", and that the ACW was the only significant conflict in which the invention was used, and references to it are ovewelmingly likely to be from such articles. It is not uncommon for American English to spell the name of an eponymous invention differently than the inventor spells his own name, and I think that is the case here. The debate over accents in proper names in Wikipedia titles aside, I think that this is an instance of overcorrection that forces the majority of articles to link via the redirect (which will be turned into a piped link, and then someone will "correct" the link), or to use a spelling that is foreign to the era and area under discussion, which misleads the reader.

Since article naming issues seem to provoke edit wars, I want to try to develop a consensus first. Was actual evidence of usage considered, or was the move reflexive? Robert A West 18:11, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

I saw it spelt as such in the novel The Guns of the South, and went to find it on Wikipedia out of curiosity. Not finding it at "Minié ball," I tried "Minie ball," found it, did a Google search and saw many others are spelling it with the accent mark (unfortunately Google is "smart" enough nowadays to include accentless variants in searches for terms containing accent marks, so you have to sift through accentless spellings to find them), so I moved the article.

Well, there certainly should have been a redirect from Minié ball to Minie ball at minimum. I am surprised there wasn't. Robert A West 23:46, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

I do notice that Google turns up 19,900 results for "minie ball" and 21,500 for "minié ball", so I'm thinking the difference there is the accent-only spellings. So it's rare, but by no means unheard of. Considering I came to the article looking for information about it in the first place, I can't say which spelling is correct, but there's some evidence of usage.

  — J’raxis (T) 01:14:22, 2005-08-14 (UTC)

Thanks. I will put it on my list of "Things to look at when I get a chance." The lack of references is really more troubling. Robert A West 23:44, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Technical issue, design of original minie ball:

If memory serves the "original" minie ball had a tiny iron plug in the base to force expansion and it was only after the Crimean War experience that the armorers found that gas pressure from powder explosion alone would reliably expand the bullets skirt to fit the rifling. This would be pre-civil war, I think..

Can anyone verify this? I am reluctant to change the article right now but would like to call this to someones attention since it is of historical interest

Thanx

WarLord 23:25, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

I found this article:

[1]]Weaponry: The Rifle-Musket and the Minié Ball

This article was written by Allan W. Howey and originally published in the October 1999 issue of Civil War Times Magazine.

snipped...

Delvigne's developments inspired Minié, who had served with the French Chasseurs in several African campaigns, to do further work toward making an efficient, effective bullet. In 1849, he came up with one that more closely resembled Norton's than Delvigne's. Like Norton's bullet, Minié's had a hollow cylindrical base and a rounded conical nose. Minié also incorporated a plug in the bullet's hollow base to assist expansion, just as Greener had done to Norton's design. Instead of a wooden plug, however, Minié used an iron cup, which in effect served the same purpose as Thouvenin's metal post. The explosion of the gunpowder would drive the iron cup forward and expand the bullet's base to fit the rifling grooves snugly.

By this point in the story, it should not be surprising to learn that the French army never adopted the new bullet. It took the British army to use it in their new 1851 Enfield rifles, paying Minié 20,000 pounds for his patent. The army also had to pay Greener 1,000 pounds, after he won a patent infringement lawsuit over the bullet's plug design. The bullet as it would be used by the soldiers in blue and gray was now virtually complete. It had also acquired the name that stuck among English-speaking troops--minnie ball, even though the captain's French surname was properly pronounced min-YAY and his innovation was not a ball but a cone-shaped bullet.

In the early 1850s, James H. Burton, a master armorer at the U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, gave the minié bullet the form it would take into the Civil War. By lengthening the bullet slightly and thinning the walls of its hollow base, Burton was able to dispense with the iron plug. The base of the improved bullet expanded just as well as Minié's but was much easier and cheaper to mass-produce. By the mid-1850s, the fully evolved minié bullet made it possible to build an infantry weapon as easy to load as the old smoothbore musket but with the accuracy and range of a rifle. The term rifle-musket reflected the weapon's lethal combination of attributes.

U.S. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, future president of the Confederacy, adopted the rifle-musket and minié bullet for the U.S. Army in 1855. An improved version of the rifle-musket--the 1861 model built by the federal armory in Springfield, Massachusetts--became the principal infantry weapon of Northern soldiers in the Civil War.

snipped...

I do not know if this reference would violate a copyright but it would seem persuasive that a modification to the article is needed.

thanx

WarLord 23:55, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Made changes to article to reflect the iron plug in original minie design. Someone needs to check the typo situation. An addition worth thinking about would be an illustration of the paper cartidge that the soldiers carried and tore apart to load the guns...

thanx

WarLord 03:00, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Merge discussion comments

• Keep separate articles -- The Minie ball should have its own article, and not be merged with the Minie rifle article, due to the Minie ball's separate historical significance during the U.S. Civil War. The Minie ball was widely used in .58 cal rifles that were not Minie rifles. It would be analogous to talking about .30-30 cartridges and insisting on only focusing on Winchester's rifles and discounting subsequent use in Marlin rifles. Many users will be interested only in the Minie ball that was used in more than the Minie rifle. There is a good reason to keep the two articles separate. Yaf 03:58, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
• Concur since it has been a few months, I am removing the merge proposal. Wendell 15:45, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Dubious

Minié rifles could not have been issued in 1846 if the rifle itself was developed only in 1849. Duly noted in the Minié rifle article. GregorB (talk) 21:44, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Effectiveness

The article discusses an objective test and then goes into what sound like wild rumors.--Jrm2007 (talk) 13:46, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Effects section

I've added a section on the effects of the ball compared to the round ball from earlier muskets. The source is a Confederate manual of field surgery which I believe to be reliable; the discussion of the wounds is consistent with what other sources say, and the book is easily available and quite worthwhile reading.

I compared this against the "Effectiveness" section that used to be in the article. The source I used describes a similar test: 120 shots were fired at 500 yards against a series of wooden planks one inch thick and 20 inches apart. (The kind of wood isn't given.) 63 out of 120 balls penetrated the first board, 55 the second, 32 went as far as the fifth board and one penetrated all eight one-inch planks. I didn't want to include that in the article, however. I hope the basic premise of the new "effects" section will be clear and not controversial: Minie wounds took a straight path and went all the way through, while round musket balls were deflected and often lodged in the wound. Roches (talk) 08:25, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Lemma again

Is "Minié ball" really the scientifically accepted term? I mean since it's not a ball at all, maybe "Minié bullet" or "Minié projectile" might be more correct. And I'm not asking if everybody in your nearest reenactment club keeps calling it that out of habit, but for the professional nomenclature in the firearm business. In modern English I mostly see "bullet" or "round" and can't remember to ever have read "ball", when the subject is a modern projectile.
While I know that in the English language people usually give a rat's ass about what words originally meant, as a non-native speaker I sometimes find it worthwile to ask anyways.
(And yes, the German "Kugel", meaning "sphere" or "ball" is also used for modern bullets, but the average German doesn't nearly have as much knowledge about firearms as the average American, and everyone is annoyingly imprecise about weapons terms anyways.)
Personally I would make this distinction:
"I'm not loading my musket with shot, but with Minié ball" - I find acceptable, talking about the type of ammunition.
"He got hit by a Minié ball" - No. That wasn't a ball, it was a Minié bullet. Talking about the particular projectile.
--BjKa (talk) 15:01, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes it is. A ball doesn't have to be round. The correct technical term is conical ball. It's named after one of three engineers in France who developed it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Digitallymade (talk • contribs) 01:30, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Firstly Minie bullet is not a "conical ball" (square triangle?) and secondly statement "since the conical ball had a higher muzzle velocity and greater mass" is wrong - mas is greater, but velocity usually a tad slower or at very least on par (BP usually doing just below speed of sound). It is true however that energy was much higher (because of mass) and thus damages where more severe. Statement "entire point of the minie ball was to damage the bones" is also wrong - whole idea of Minie bullet (not ball!!! it is NOT a ball!) was easier loading because it engages rifling by means of "skirt" expanding, so before loading bullet was smaller in diameter than bore and going down very easy. Ball (real ball!) by contrast was engaged in rifling by means of cloth patching and thus require considerable force (and time) to put it down to bore. It is quite difficult to start putting patched ball to bore, so special tool required to start process; Minie bullet can be easy put down by ramrod and do not require any extra tool. Cloth patch also became obsolete with Minie bullet leading to simpler supply and simplified (and speedier!) loading process. Also should be noted that Minie do require more lubrication (this what those grooves for, not for mythical "aerodynamic stability" - stability of projectile governed by spinning and this is why we need rifling) while real balls can do with cloth patch wetted with saliva, so after few shoots accuracy with Minie start to degrading comparing to real cloth patched balls due to accumulation of residual burnt from lubricant. It accumulating to extend that it became difficult to put bullet down to bore after few dozens of shots and rifle require cleaning to continue shooting. This is why Minie was only popular with military where speed of reloading was paramount, while hunters prefer real cloth patched balls up until breech loading was invented. Please correct. 220.237.0.150 (talk) 23:37, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

"There is absolutely no doubt that "minié ball" is the common name for this projectile, regardless of its shape, and I would oject strenuously to the article being moved, per WP:COMMONNAME. Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:45, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

It was more about effectiveness, speed, reasons and other stuff rather than about stupid terminology. This is why I put it under "Effectiveness" and I did not asked you to move it around - do whatever you please in article, but please leave discussion alone. Yes I know that because at that time everyone use real balls as projectiles and there was no "bullets" they incorrectly called it "ball" simply because then "ball" means "projectile". They may became "bullets", but span of life was short enough - soon after they developed bridge loading and Minie design became obsolete. Almost actually. Because very same design currently used as projectiles in pneumatic firearms (another stupid terminology) and called "pallets", not "balls". So historically they call it "balls", but currently they called "bullets" - have a look here: http://leeprecision.com/bullet-casting/black-powder-molds/black-powder-minie-bullet-molds/ . Also I have a box presented to me by someone with such bullet from Civil War (this is why I started to dig to find if they really used Minies during Civil Was - I thought that this is later design) and on the box it says "1863 Civil War Bullet found at Kennesaw Mth. Kennesaw, Georgia, U.S.A." and I can post proof photo. Personally I believe that they should call "bullets" with reference that historically upon invention they use to call them "balls". It would be stupid insisting to call helicopter "Gyroplane" on the ground that Louis Breguet call it like that and the same applies to Minie. 220.237.0.150 (talk) 03:46, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

FWIW European origin, British terminology & perspective

From Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography 1876 Edition

MINIÉ, Claude Etienne, the introducer of the once famous Minié rifle, was born in Paris in 1810. He entered the army at a very early age, made several campaigns in Africa, and attained the rank of captain of chasseurs. The French troops being unable with their smooth-bore muskets to compete in range with the more powerful pieces of the Arabs, it was considered necessary to produce some change in the French arms. Captain Minié, encouraged by the duke of Montpensier, made an extensive course of experiments, and presented to the French artillery committee a new pattern rifle and a new bullet, which gave results far exceeding the practice of the service musket. The great peculiarity of his system was the use of an elongated bullet having a cup or capsule of iron in the end next the powder, so as to expand the lead and make the bullet take the rifling. The system was not perfect on account of the iron cups being occasionally blown through the bullets, leaving a ring of lead in the barrel; but it was the first great step towards the introduction of the rifle into the armies of Europe, and to the production of the Enfield rifle with which the British troops are armed. It would be unjust to Captain Minié to deprive him of the merit of bringing the modern rifle into efficient use; but as regards the invention there can be little doubt that Captain Norton of Rosherville at an earlier period had used the system known as the Minié system. Large offers on the part of Russia are said to have been made to and rejected by the gallant French officer, who gave to his own country the whole benefit of his labour, and did not even take a patent which could scarcely have failed to be valuable. From the Emperor Napoleon III. he received a moderate indemnity, and was appointed to conduct the school of musketry at Vincennes, with unattached rank as "chef de bataillon." As the question of invention has been vehemently discussed, it may he proper to observe that the Minié system applies not to the rifle barrel, but to the bullet exclusively.—P. E. D. (P. E. Dove, Author of "The Theory of Human Progression," &c. Where Mr. Dove gathered this knowledge is not explained. French Wikis may be more revealing.) 22:24, 6 December 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Klarm768 (talk • contribs)

Numerous sources discoverable with Ngram viewer search for "Minié." for example The Evolution of the Rifle regarding Minié p. 462-463, Cassell's Popular Science - January 1, 1906, page 458 content is DRM protected.

* https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=2CA8AQAAMAAJ Klarm768 (talk) 23:08, 6 December 2018 (UTC).

When did it fall out of use?

Could an expert please state when the Minié ball stopped being used? Thanks. 109.78.173.29 (talk) 08:24, 12 October 2022 (UTC)