Sharps rifles are a series of large-bore, single-shot, falling-block, breech-loading rifles, beginning with a design by Christian Sharps in 1848 and ceasing production in 1881. They were renowned for long-range accuracy. By 1874 the rifle was available in a variety of calibers, and it was one of the few designs to be successfully adapted to metallic cartridge use. The Sharps rifles became icons of the American Old West with their appearances in many Western-genre films and books. Perhaps as a result, several rifle companies offer reproductions of the Sharps rifle. History Sharps' initial rifle was patented September 12, 1848, and manufactured by A. S. Nippes at Mill Creek in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1850. The second model used the Maynard tape primer, and surviving examples are marked Edward Maynard - Patentee 1845. In 1851, the second model was brought to the Robbins & Lawrence Company (R&L) of Windsor, Vermont, where the Model 1851 was developed for mass production. Rollin White of R&L invented the knife-edge breech block and self-cocking device for the "box-lock" Model 1851. This is referred to as the "first contract", which was for 10,000 Model 1851 carbines, of which approximately 1,650 were produced by R&L in Windsor. In 1851, the "second contract" was made, for 15,000 rifles, and the Sharps Rifle Manufacturing Company was organized as a holding company with $1,000 in capital and with John C. Palmer as president, Christian Sharps as engineer, and Richard S. Lawrence as master armorer and superintendent of manufacturing. Sharps was to be paid a royalty of $1 per firearm, and the factory was built on R&L's property in Hartford, Connecticut. The Model 1851 was replaced in production by the Model 1853. Christian Sharps left the company in 1855 to form his own manufacturing company called "C. Sharps & Company" in Philadelphia; Lawrence continued as the chief armorer until 1872 and developed the various Sharps models and their improvements that made the rifle famous. In 1874, the company was reorganized and renamed the "Sharps Rifle Company," and it remained in Hartford until 1876, whereupon it relocated to Bridgeport, Connecticut. The Sharps rifle played a prominent role in the Bleeding Kansas conflict during the 1850s, particularly in the hands of anti-slavery forces. The Sharps rifles supplied to anti-slavery factions earned the name "Beecher's Bibles", after the famed abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher. The 1874-pattern Sharps was a particularly popular rifle that led to the