Joseph Manton

From 1780-1781, Manton was first apprenticed to a gunmaker in Grantham, Newton. He worked under his elder brother John from 1781 onward.[2] He produced around 100 weapons annually, including both cased duelling pistols and shotguns.[3]

In the early-19th century, Manton invented the tube (or pill) lock, an improvement over Alexander Forsyth's scent-bottle lock.[4] Rather than storing a reserve of fulminate in a container, they now used single-use pellets or pills. The hammer of the gun was sharpened; when it fell, it crushed the tube/pellet, causing the fulminates to detonate.

Although more reliable than Forsyth's design and adopted by many sportsmen during the Regency period (and a variant for the Austrian army),[5] it was quickly overshadowed by the percussion cap, which was adopted by the armies of Britain, France, Russia, and America to replace the flintlock.[6]

The greater part of Manton's career was spent at loggerheads with the British Army. Manton managed to interest the army in purchasing a larger version of his wooden cup design[7] to be used in rifled artillery. Manton worked tirelessly to improve cannon's firing accuracy. He created a new type of ammunition. First, the ammunition was loaded in a rifled cannon. Secondly, the cannonball was attached to the wooden cup that fitted into the rifled grooves of the cannon, which was in turn connected to a sack of gunpowder, thus eliminating the need for powder and shot to be loaded separately. The idea of fixing the powder behind the shot in a disposable cartridge is the basis for modern bullet design. It helped pave the way for breech-loading weaponry.

Manton's weapons remain some of the most highly sought-after designs of the flintlock age and can fetch more at auction than Holland & Holland's shotguns. His workforce included James Purdey (who went on to found Purdey's), Thomas Boss, William Greener, Charles Lancaster and William Moore. These five established major gun firms.[9]