The US Army adopted the .44 S&W American calibre Smith & Wesson No. 3 revolver 1870, making the No. 3 revolver the first standard-issue cartridge-firing revolvers in US service. Most military pistols up until that point were black powder cap and ball revolvers, which were (by comparison) slow, complicated, and susceptible to the effects of wet weather. In 1875 the US Ordnance Board granted Smith & Wesson a contract to outfit the military with No. 3 pistols incorporating the design improvements of Major George W. Schofield (known as the "Schofield revolver"), providing they could make the revolvers work with the .45 Colt (AKA ".45 Long Colt") ammunition already in use by the US military. Smith & Wesson instead developed their own, slightly shorter .45 caliber round, the .45 Schofield, otherwise known as the .45 S&W. When it became obvious in the field that the two cartridges would not work interchangeably in the Schofield (although they both worked in the Colt), the U.S. Government adopted the shorter .45 Schofield cartridge as the standard cartridge.