civil war technology
the civil war was a time of great technological change. inventors and men in the military made new types of weapons that changed the way that wars were fought. even better were inventions made that didn't even have any thing to do with war. inventions like those didn't just change the way people fought it changed the way they lived as well.
before the civil war soldiers had muskets that could only hold one bullet at a time and these bullets could hit at about 250 yds. and if you want to shoot with any accuracy you had to stand relatively close to your target since the effective hitting range was only about 80yds. you would probably get shot while trying to load your gun again. while riffles had a much greater range than muskets did. it could shoot a bullet at 1,000 yds and was much mare accurate. but it was nearly impossible to use these guns in battle because at the time the bullet had about the same diameter as the guns barrel. so they took way to long to load. but in 1848 an french army officer named Claude Minié invented bullets that were smaller and cone shaped. so the soldiers could load their guns much more quickly when using a rifle. rifles with the new bullets were more accurate and way more deadly than any old musket
even though rifles with the new bullets were faster to load soldiers had to pause and reload after each shot. as you can imagine the was a very dangerous thing to do on a battle field were everyone was shooting here guns and weaponry. but by 1863 there was another option on the table, repeating rifles, that could shoot more than once before needing to be reloaded. like much of the other civil war technology's they were available to the northern troops but not the southern ones.
other new weapons went to the clouds. the union spies would floated over the confederate encamps in hydrogen passenger balloons sending their new info over to their base through telegraph. and down into the waves. were iron clad warships lurked up and down the coast. maintaining a black to the confederate ports. and for their part the confederates tried to sink these ships with submarines.
the civil war was the first war ever to documented through the lens of a camera. however the photographic process was to complicated for any candid pictures. and as a result there are not any action shots. there are only portraits and landscapes. and it was only until the 20th century we could take unposed action pictures
