Inside the Berlin Hechingen Arms Factory.
Factory director Mein was demonstrating the performance of two rifles to Ernst. On the table lay the Prussian Dreyse rifle and a Chassepot rifle captured from the battlefield.
Mein picked up the Chassepot rifle and explained to Ernst, "The Chassepot rifle used by the French borrowed many successful features from the Dreyse rifle. It also used a turn-bolt action, needle firing, and paper cartridges, but compared to the latter, it was still a notch superior. Take the locking system, for example. The Dreyse rifle had a problem: it was not airtight and leaked gas. This greatly affected the efficiency of the gunpowder and, in turn, the bullet's muzzle velocity."
"The Chassepot rifle improved precisely on this issue. It changed Dreyse's hollow bolt into a solid one and added a rubber sealing ring to the top of the bolt. When the cartridge was fired, the high heat of the powder gases expanded the rubber, sealing the entire chamber very effectively. Better sealing meant higher muzzle velocity, and higher muzzle velocity meant greater range. Then there was the cartridge primer. The primer of a Dreyse cartridge was located in the middle, so the firing needle had to be very thin and long—if it was too short, it could not reach it. But the Chassepot cartridge moved the primer to the rear, so the firing needle no longer needed to be so long, greatly reducing the failure rate as well."
"The Dreyse rifle's various performances in the war have already shown that it has completely fallen behind. We had originally planned to retire one production line after the war, but we must wait until Prussia's new rifle has been finalized before replacing it completely." This was what Mein, director of the Berlin Hechingen Arms Factory, said to