The magazine turned the single-shot rifle into the repeater. Here is how it got from a tube in a rifle stock to the 30-round box on today’s most popular rifles.
Tubes first
The Spencer rifle of 1860 carried seven rimfire rounds in a tube through the stock. The Henry put a tube under the barrel and became the ancestor of the Winchester lever gun.
The box magazine
James Paris Lee patented the detachable box magazine in 1879. By the 1890s, military rifles fed from boxes loaded with stripper clips, and the M1 Garand later used an 8-round en bloc clip.
The modern era
The 1911 brought the 7-round single stack pistol magazine. After World War II, the AK47 and later the AR15 made the 30-round box the rifle standard, and double stack pistols made 15 rounds the handgun norm. Polymer bodies took over in the 2000s.
