Pepper-box
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The Pepper-box revolver or simply pepperbox (also "pepper-pot") is a multi-shot handheld firearm, popular in North America around the time of the American Civil War. The pepperbox was invented in the 1830s and was meant mainly for civilian use. It spread rapidly in the United Kingdom and some parts of continental Europe. It started disappearing gradually in the 1850s with the manufacture of true revolvers by Colt, Webley and others. It was similar to the later revolver since it contained bullets in separate chambers in a rotating cylinder. Unlike the revolver however, each chamber had its own barrel.
Some of the early pistols required the barrels to be rotated by hand. A rare few are single action; rotating the barrel group as the hammer is manually cocked for each shot. The vast majority use the double action system attributed to Ethan Allen whereby pulling the trigger rotates the barrel block, raises the hammer and finally fires the top chamber.
Accurate aiming is often difficult, and on most pistols almost impossible because the hammer is in the line of sight. However, the primary market was as a self defense weapon for civilians, meaning most use was at close range. Common practice at the time was in fact not to aim pistols, but to "shoot from the hip", holding the gun low and simply pointing at the target's center of mass. With this use in mind, many pepper boxes are in fact smoothbore, even though rifling had been commonly used for decades by the time of their manufacture.
Some fired the lower barrel instead of the upper, such as the Belgian Marriette patent, or the US Cooper. Usually these employed an "underhammer" action, with the hammer mounted under the barrels, forward of the trigger guard.
The so-called "transitional" revolvers were the same action but with one single barrel attached to the front of a cut-down pepperbox cylinder.
Several models were dangerous because firing one powder charge could ignite the others, all at the same time, when proper care was not taken. This would be less dangerous than when the same thing happened in a single-barreled revolver, because in the pepperbox at least all the bullets could freely exit the muzzle. This was perhaps the main reason for the pepperbox's survival after more modern revolvers came along.
Arguably, the pepperbox is a form of Volley gun, a firearm which fires multiple rounds by use of multiple barrel and chamber assemblies.
