Gaspard Kollner

{{Short description|Fifteenth-century gunsmith}}

Gaspard Kollner was a fifteenth- or sixteenth-century gunsmith based in Vienna. He is credited with having discovered that by rifling, that is, adding spiral grooves to the insides of the smoothbore muskets then in use, it was possible to make the gun not only shoot straighter but that its effective range would also increase.{{cite journal|last=Martin |first=Robert E. |date=September 1941 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9iYDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA106 |title=What about the Rifle? |page=106 |journal=Popular Science |volume=139 |number=3}}

Some authorities, however, point out that Kollner's barrels had straight, parallel grooves{{cite book|last1=Lamphier |first1=Peg A. |first2=Rosanne |last2=Welch |date=2019 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aWGHDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA35 |title=Technical Innovation in American History: An Encyclopedia of Science and Technology |page=35 |publisher=ABC-CLIO |isbn=978-1-61069-094-2}} and that it was Augustus Kotter, of Nuremberg, who introduced the spiral-grooved barrels, in 1520.{{cite book|last=Greener |first=W. W. |date=2013 |orig-date=1881 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=r2WCDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT709 |chapter=XXV. The History of Rifling and Its Development. The Invention of Rifling |title=The Gun and Its Development |publisher=Skyhorse Publishing |isbn=978-1-5107-2025-1}}

The premise is that the principle was adapted from the crossbows 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 firearms.