Hiram Berdan

Born in Phelps, New York in 1824, Hiram Berdan was a mechanical engineer who had been a top rifle shot in the country prior to the Civil War. Berdan recruited two regiments of sharpshooters for the Union army that required the potential recruits to pass rigorous marksmanship tests. Both regiments served the Union well despite stories that Berdan may have been less than competent in his command role, sometimes conveniently being away from the battlefield. In 1865 he was awarded the brevets of brigadier and major general for Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, at each of which he led a brigade. He invented a repeating rifle and a patented musket ball before the war. He also developed a twin screw submarine gunboat, a torpedo boat for evading torpedo nets, the Russian Berdan rifle, and a long distance range-finder. One of his inventions that has had a lasting legacy is the Berdan primer for metallic cartridge firearms. Berdan died March 31,1893 while playing a game of chess at the Metropolitan Club in Washington D.C.