Gun lock with a bizarre system

[fernando]

Remember when we were kids, the pistols they sold at the toy shop, made of some alloy, with a primer system that consisted in a tape roll containing minuscule fulminating patches at intervals, that you could activate through a device connected to the trigger, pretending you were shooting the thing for real, during your cowboy and gunmen ‘re enacting’ scenes ?
What i (we?) would never guess is that some genial American dentist, called Edward Maynard, has invented this system in 1845, not for toy guns, but for real weapons.
In the attached pictures we can see a lock of such system, that equipped the Greene Carbine, from which model (only) 2000 units were produced by Massachussets Arms Co. for the British Forces, to be used in the Crimean war.
It seems that this system proved to be unreliable during war conditions. Also one of its aledged handicaps was that it couldn’t be reloaded wearing gloves. Rumours were that several of these carbines were destroyed, due to the wrath caused by their obsoletism.
Eventually this example has traces of having been fitted into a carbine and later torn from its place, as part of the fixing screws remain in their holes.
Despite this unit was made around 1856, its condition is pristine, basically due to its case hardening finishing.
Fernando