Benjamin Tyler Henry

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Benjamin Tyler Henry (1821–1898) was an American gunsmith and manufacturer. He was the inventor of the Henry rifle, the first reliable lever-action repeating rifle.

Henry was hired by Oliver Winchester at the New Haven Arms Company in the late 1850s to improve the design of the Volcanic repeating rifle. On October 16, 1860, he received a patent on the Henry rifle, which soon proved the worth of the lever-action design on the battlefields of the Civil War, where Henry rifles were used alongside muzzle-loading rifled muskets such as the Springfield Model 1861. (The first Henrys were not produced for army use until mid-1862.)

Benjamin Tyler Henry continued to work at the Winchester Repeating Arms Company until at least 1873.

[edit] See also

• Winchester Repeating Arms Company
• Winchester rifle

[edit] External links

• The Henry Repeating Arms Company Web site
• Henry repeating rifle Model 1866 US Patent no. 30,446 & other resources