[supercat]

Could any firearm produced within 50 years of that thing produced anything near the rate of fire? Was it just because of expense that airguns such as those didn't see wider use?

[tomzz]

That thing could have made Austria the terror of the world if Austria had been a warlike country and its soldiers had been a tad brighter. Basically their military and their soldiers couldn't deal with it, too far ahead of its time. Against an Austrian army equipped with that thing, Napolean should have gotten wiped.

[tomzz]

Part of the problem has to have been recruiting practices then prevalent. You had an age in which a battle amounted to lines of men walking up to within fifty yards of eachother and blasting away with muskets; obviously IQ was not something you wanted in a soldier at the time. You wanted him just bright enough to carry and operate the simplest kind of firearm, and no brighter.

That obviously would not have worked with a technological marvel like the Zarandoni rifle. Austria would have had to scrap its entire military as it existed and developed a citizen army.