quote:

Originally posted by redleg2/9:
"Lock and Load" goes back to at least the Trapdoor Springfield's and possibly to the Allin and previous conversions to cartridge.

You had to lock the hammer back in order to lift the trapdoor and load the cartridge.

Many guns require cocking (or, I suppose, it could be called “locking”) the hammer back to completely load the weapon, including attaching a percussion cap or priming the pan. That requirement went back long before the Trapdoor. Why that would have ever been added as a preliminary command, though, is not clear to me. “Loading” is whatever the entire process consists of, including making it possible to chamber a round.

Loading a musket, for example, requires not only drawing the hammer back to at least the half cock position, but tearing open a cartridge (sometimes), pouring the powder into the barrel, inserting the bullet, ramming the bullet down, returning the ramrod to its position, and priming the gun with powder in the pan or fixing the cap.

As I say, there are many opinions about why the “lock” part became a step that had to be mentioned to a proficient shooter before loading. Not one, however, has ever made the slightest sense to me, and I doubt that one ever will. And fortunately none will ever have to make sense to me because I never tell anyone to do anything other than load their weapons and, sometimes if necessary, then remind them to decock or “safeties on”—both of which satisfy the “lock” part, but, of course, after the gun is loaded.

But drifting off firearms to aviation, how many of us ever understood where the term “joystick” came from?

Had always heard that originally a whole bolt of fabric was 9 yards long. By taking the whole 9 yards, you could get a discount because the seller would not have any leftovers.

This turned in to a Ball of Wax. Ain't that the bee's knees?