The first smokeless powder rifle might have been the Austrian M1854 Lorenz rifle musket, instead of the famous French1886 Lebel. Unfortunately for the Austrians, the chemical process for making smokeless guncotton cartridges were not quite up to the challenge in the early 1860s. It’s still a fascinating story! Baron von Lenk and the 15-year Austrian experimental development of smokeless guncotton ammunition is an incredible tale of what (almost) might have been.