The modern rifle is considered a descendant of the musket, a large caliber smoothbore weapon for infantry use. By 1550, the musket had become the most important weapon in Europe, because the ammunition was easier to load and the destructive power was greater than any alternative weapons. About the same time, gunsmiths in central Europe had created a better way to reach a target: rifling. The term, which came from the German riefeln, referred to a method of cutting spiral grooves in the gun barrel to impart spin to the ball. Such spin would help stabilize the ball in flight and give it greater accuracy over a longer range. At first rifling was not a success because it was expensive to cut the grooves and the ball often got stuck on the grooves when it was loaded.

In the 1720s German and Swiss gunmakers who had settled in the...