PaperCartridges Shoots the M1885 Remington-Lee Navy

In 1879, James Paris Lee designed a repeating magazine-fed rifle that used detachable box magazines. It was the first of its kind, and nearly every military rifle in use today continues to use detachable box magazines. The U.S. Navy ordered a limited number of these 1879 Lee rifles in 1885, produced by Remington and chambered in .45-70, and we know this rifle today as the "Model 1885" Remington-Lee Navy. This rifle defies easy categorization. It is simultaneously a detachable box magazine fed rifle AND a large bore black powder rifle from the pre-smokeless powder era. It's an American rifle in a venerable old black powder chambering of .45-70, and it also has those familiar angles and bolt location and magazine shape that would be seen again in the .303 Lee-Metford and eventually Lee-Enfield rifles adopted a few years later as the British service rifle.

All of these things add up to make the M1885 Remington-Lee Navy a unique piece of black powder firearms history, and definitely a contender for the most modern military rifle designed during the pre-smokeless powder era.