Where do .22 and .177 come from? ...and Why?

[chieffool]

Does this mean (if expressed as a caliber) that .177 is actually 17.7 x 1/100th of an inch?

[Gareth W-B]

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There was a thread on this very topic in the General Airgun section a week or so ago, with many of the answers, and much of the info you are looking for.

[chieffool]

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There was a thread on this very topic in the General Airgun section a week or so ago, with many of the answers, and much of the info you are looking for.

I know... I started it. But although it helped gather a lot of the ballistic history of the caliber and it's development for rimfire, it still didn't produce a definitive answer for the WHO and WHEN concerning the adoption of .22 and .177 for airguns....
...which is why the thread is reiterated here among the gurus and Illuminati of COLLECTABLES.

'Cos sometimes it is GOOD to be a pedantic geek, and I really want to know the history of the stuff I like to do!

[Gareth W-B]

'Cos sometimes it is GOOD to be a pedantic geek, and I really want to know the history of the stuff I like to do!

Ahh-ha, a Kindred Spirt. Then I totally Sopport your M.O. Nice one, well done, and keep on keeping on with your quest. After all, every day is a school day (as I believe I may have said once or twice before ??? ). Ha ha. Atb: G.

[ccdjg]

Does this mean (if expressed as a caliber) that .177 is actually 17.7 x 1/100th of an inch?

Yes, that's right. 0.01 inches means 1 hundredth of an inch, so 17.7 of these comes to 0.177 inches. Althernatively you can think of .177 inches as 177 thousandths of an inch, or as engineers would say: "177 thou'.

[ccdjg]

I now take back my earlier suggestion that the .177 calibre probably started in Germany around 1880-90, as 4.5 mm. I had forgotten that examples of the American Haviland and Gunn air pistol (or perhaps more accurately referred to as the Morse pistol) from the 1870's are known with .177 calibre.
So could Haviland and Gunn not only have been the first to introduce break-barrel airguns, but also the first to popularise the .22 and .177 calibres?

In the 1870's there were really only two companies driving the popular airgun manufacturing scene, Haviland & Gunn favouring 0.177 and 0.22 calibres, and Quackenbush (who was heavily into airgun pellet and dart manufacture) favouring 0.21. When the break-barel design migrated to Germany and the Gems started to appear in Europe, it seems that the H & G calibres were preferred and won the day.

I can understand that gunsmiths experimented with 0.20, 0.21, 0.22, 0.25 calibres, and probably also 0.23 and 0.24 at some point, and by chance 0.22 became the most accepted, but I can't understand where .177 came from. Why not 0.18 inches, which would be the next size down in this series?

The only logical explanation I can think of is that the calibre did start off as a perfectly logical 0.18 inches (probably by H & G), and when their designs migrated to Germany this was metricised to a nice round 4.5 mm (it would actually have come to 4.57mm without rounding down). Then after the German Gems has been imported into the UK for a few years and British gunmakers began to make ammunition and even their own guns to this calibre, they converted 4.5mm back to inches, which would be 0.177 inches if done precisely.

It would be nice to have old catalogue information about the H & G Morse pistol which specifies the calibre, but I do not know of any such thing. If it did, the chances are it would say 0.18 rather than 0.177. So according to my theory, the 0.177 calibre arose by a sequence of misleading events ( a bit like a Chinese whisper).

[chieffool]

Dear ccdjg - I think we are getting nearer to truth for .22 if we consider development of these calibers for airguns as an accidental progression from the likely tooling base that the introduction of rimfire made available. Basically, if you have the machinery to make the barrel for one, then you can adapt and make the barrel for the other.

If so: do we have any evidence of 'identical' barrels for both air rifle and rimfire to mark the first 'prototype'?

....which then still leaves us with the oddity of .177. Perhaps six of one and half a dozen of the other?.

OR Does this mean Havilland & Gunn are the first makers of .177?

[mel h]

Inches, yards, chains, furlongs, miles, not forgetting the fathoms and leagues, along with pints quarts gallons, pounds and bushels etc. etc. then four, eight, twelve or 20 balls to the pound of lead, you never expected a simple answer did you?

[chieffool]

Inches, yards, chains, furlongs, miles, not forgetting the fathoms and leagues, along with pints quarts gallons, pounds and bushels etc. etc. then four, eight, twelve or 20 balls to the pound of lead, you never expected simple answer did you?

Not necessarily a simple answer - but I thought I'd get an answer by now. Afterall, AIRGUNBBS is devoted to all things to do with this sport - so you'd think a question as basic as 'where did it all start?' would get a definitive response by now. At the moment we seem stuck on identifying the very first .22 and first .177 airguns. I don't even know if the first was a rifle - or a pistol?


...and i only asked because i genuinely don't know the answer!

[mel h]

Not necessarily a simple answer - but I thought I'd get an answer by now. Afterall, AIRGUNBBS is devoted to all things to do with this sport - so you'd think a question as basic as 'where did it all start?' would get a definitive response by now. At the moment we seem stuck on identifying the very first .22 and first .177 airguns. I don't even know if the first was a rifle - or a pistol?


...and i only asked because i genuinely don't know the answer!

I have to say that it is a question that I have myself pondered in the past. I always assumed that it came from the continent, there were other increments of linear measurement before the metric system. I would be happy to hear the answer if there is one to be found.