Gaspard Kollner was a fifteenth- or sixteenth-century

gunsmith A gunsmith is a person who repairs, modifies, designs, or builds guns. The occupation differs from an armorer, who usually replaces only worn parts in standard firearms. Gunsmiths do modifications and changes to a firearm that may require a very ...

based in

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

. He is credited with having discovered that by

rifling Rifling is the term for helical grooves machined into the internal surface of a firearms's barrel for imparting a spin to a projectile to improve its aerodynamic stability and accuracy. It is also the term (as a verb) for creating such groov ...

, that is, adding spiral grooves to the insides of the

smoothbore A smoothbore weapon is one that has a barrel without rifling. Smoothbores range from handheld firearms to powerful tank guns and large artillery mortars. Some examples of smoothbore weapons are muskets, blunderbusses, and flintlock pistols. ...

musket A musket is a muzzle-loaded long gun that appeared as a smoothbore weapon in the early 16th century, at first as a heavier variant of the arquebus, capable of penetrating plate armour. By the mid-16th century, this type of musket gradually dis ...

s then in use, it was possible to make the gun not only shoot straighter but that its

effective range Effective range is a term with several definitions depending upon context. Distance Effective range may describe a distance between two points where one point is subject to an energy release at the other point. The source, receiver, and conditio ...

would also increase. Some authorities, however, point out that Kollner's barrels had straight, parallel grooves and that it was Augustus Kotter, of Nuremberg, who introduced the spiral-grooved barrels, in 1520. The premise is that the principle was adapted from the

crossbow A crossbow is a ranged weapon using an Elasticity (physics), elastic launching device consisting of a Bow and arrow, bow-like assembly called a ''prod'', mounted horizontally on a main frame called a ''tiller'', which is hand-held in a similar f ...

s of the day, much more precise weapons than the musket, and which shot the bolt through a spiral-grooved guiding tube. However, it is not clear whether these crossbows were designed before or after the introduction of spiral grooving in

firearm A firearm is any type of gun that uses an explosive charge and is designed to be readily carried and operated by an individual. The term is legally defined further in different countries (see legal definitions). The first firearms originate ...

References

{{reflist Gunsmiths