The Girardoni (sometimes spelled "Girandoni") is easily the most famous early air rifle or windbuchse largely thanks to the fact that for many years it has been associated with Lewis & Clark and their famous Corps of Discovery Expedition. It is widely believed that they either had a Girardoni or a very similar design by Isaiah Lukens of Philadelphia. The Girardoni was designed by Bartolomeo Girardoni around 1779 and is also significant as one of the first widely used repeating martial arms, with a magazine tube on the right side of the barrel for use with lead balls and a breech block that is able to be pressed sideways against spring pressure for loading/repeating capability. The military variation was notably used by Austrian sharpshooters from 1787-1815. Because the air tanks took around 30 minutes of pumping by hand to bring to full pressure, the riflemen had assistants that repressurized the reservoirs initially and later also had more efficient wagon mounted pumps. "Wind guns" had several advantages over conventional firearms including that they were quieter, smokeless, quicker to reload, and relatively unaffected by rain. They also required less cleaning since they did not require corrosive black powder. "Stormer Herzberg" signed on the lock. Multiple members of the Stormer family of gunmakers were active in Herzberg in the 18th and the 19th centuries, including Ernst August Stormer who was known to manufactured air guns. This attractive sporting rifle features an octagon barrel with 8-groove rifling chambered in approximately 10 mm and with a removable brass barrel insert with a smooth bore for use with shot that measures approximately 8 mm, blade front sight, dovetail mounted two leaf notch rear sight, a walnut stock with incised carving along the edge of the ramrod channel, relief carving on the bottom with a checkered grip area, and a metal buttstock reservoir. Features high quality floral border engraving on the top of the gold finished frame and trigger guard. Circular brass collection tag marked "R.D. BEEMAN/PRIVATE/COLLECTION/2917" hanging from the trigger guard. More information on Girardoni air rifles can be found on pages 598-601 of the book "Blue Book of Airguns, Thirteenth Edition" with this exact example photographed on page 600. Provenance: The Dr. Robert D. Beeman Collection