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HANES or EXCELSIOR Grenade

My old friend Millsman will forgive my gently pointing out that Forsyth's original patent was not for a percussion cap, per se, but for a lock (roller primer or "scent bottle", sic) which used a small magazine of a priming powder for igniting each shot. And there are a number of claimants for the invention of the percussion cap including, according to George, Colonel Hawker/Joe Manton, James Purdey and Joseph Egg. This was a time of pellets, powders, tubes and paper patches, et al, and the idea of a pellet being inserted into a closed end tube to produce a "cap" seems to have occurred to a number of people around the same time. Steel, pewter and copper were all employed - even, of all things, an old umbrella ferrule - but there can be no doubt but that Joshua Shaw's idea came out in 1814 using a reloadable cap made of steel, followed in 1815 by an improved cap made of pewter that could be thrown away after use, followed again in 1816 by a cap made from sheet copper that we would recognise today. This work seems to have been carried out in England, but Shaw, a landscape painter, lived in the US in the latter part of his life.
Shaw is therefore usually credited with the invention, and I agree that the US would have known of it from a very early stage.
Alan1
 
Thanks Alan. Yes is was more complex than I stated. Manton and Shaw seem to be the prime (sic) movers.
 
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In 1863 Polish underground try to kill governor of the Kingdom of Poland, tsar's General Fyodor Berg (Poland was then incorporated in Russian empire but still fight for independence). In Warsaw, at Nowy Świat street they drop from the window some Excelsior-type "bombs", I'm not sure, with or without external shell, on Berg's coach. They also use a kind of "molotovs" - bottles with "Fenian Fire", self-igniting phosphorus mix. But Berg wasn't injured, only some his soldiers - Cossack escort and horses suffered.
 
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