Benjamin Berkeley Hotchkiss patented an improvement for the Hotchkiss projectile
on May 16, 1865, patent #47,725. According to his patent a wooden disk was to be inserted
between the base cup and the base of the nose to decrease the risk of premature fracture
of the shell during initial firing. The insufficient burning time of the standard-style
Federal 5 1/4 second Bormann time fuze led to the development of the 14-second version for
rifled ordnance. The protective cover of the Hotchkiss combination fuze pictured here was
not removed prior to firing. The Hotchkiss sub-pattern projectile with a rounded base have
been recovered from late-war battlefields, such as Petersburg, Virginia.
