Crossbow
A crossbow is a ranged weapon using an elastic launching device consisting of a bow-like assembly called a prod, mounted horizontally on a main frame called a tiller, which is hand-held in a similar fashion to the stock of a long gun. Crossbows shoot arrow-like projectiles called bolts or quarrels. A person who shoots crossbow is called a crossbowman, an arbalister or an arbalist (after the arbalest, a European crossbow variant used during the 12th century).
Crossbows and bows use the same elastic launch principles, but differ in that an archer using a bow must draw-and-shoot in a quick and smooth motion with limited or no time for aiming, while a crossbow's design allows it to be spanned and cocked ready for use at a later time and thus affording the wielder unlimited time to aim. When shooting a bow, the archer must first fully perform the draw, holding the string and arrow while pulling them back with arm and back muscles, and then either immediately loose without a period of aiming, or hold that form while aiming. When using the heavy bows suitable for warfare, both actions demand some physical strength. As such, the accurate and sustained use of a bow in warfare takes much practice.
Crossbows avoid these potential problems by having trigger-released cocking mechanisms to maintain the tension on the string once it has been spanned – drawn – into its ready-to-shoot position, allowing a crossbow to be carried cocked and ready and affording its user time to aim it. This also allows for crossbows to be operated in succession by groups of people, with one person operating a cocked crossbow while others reload and ready them. Crossbows are spanned into their cocked positions using a number of techniques and devices, some of which are mechanical and employ gear and pulley arrangements – levers, belt hooks, pulleys, windlasses and cranequins – to overcome very high draw weight. These potentially achieve better precision and enable their effective use by less familiarised and trained personnel compared to the training and practice necessary to become proficient with the English longbow or the bows of steppe nomads.
These advantages for the crossbow are somewhat offset by the longer time needed to reload a crossbow for further shots. Crossbows with high draw weights require sophisticated systems of gears and pulleys to operate that are awkward and slow to employ on the battlefield. Medieval crossbows were also very inefficient, with short shot stroke lengths from the string lock to the release point of their bolts, along with the slower speeds of their steel prods and heavy strings, despite their massive draw weights compared to bows. Modern crossbow designs overcome these shortcomings.
The earliest known crossbows were invented in ancient China in the first millennium BCE and brought about a major shift in the role of projectile weaponry in wars, especially during Qin's unification wars and later the Han campaigns against northern nomads and western states. The medieval European crossbow was called by many names, including "crossbow" itself; most of these names derived from the word ballista, an ancient Greek torsion siege engine similar in appearance but different in design principle.
In modern times, firearms have largely supplanted bows and crossbows as weapons of war, but crossbows remain widely used for competitive shooting sports and hunting, and for relatively silent shooting.
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