Excerpt from an article in the Remington Society of America by Dr. Glenn Kaye:
https://www.remingtonsociety.org/remington-military-rolling-block-exhibit-of-dr-glenn-kaye/
Remington Military Rolling Block Exhibit of Dr. Glenn Kaye
This display includes most examples of the U.S. military contracts for Remington rolling block longarms, excluding conversion guns and cadet guns. While U.S. military usage was limited, they are an important part of the lineage of U.S. military arms, as well as a part of the history of arguably the most successful and widely used action design worldwide.
In 1863, Leonard Geiger, a Remington employee, patented a rotating-breechblock, single-shot, breechloading mechanism for use with metallic cartridges. The design was modified by the plant supervisor, Joseph Rider, in 1863 and 1864 and led to the development of the Remington Split Breech carbine, of which 20,000 were manufactured for the Union Army during the Civil War. Further improvements of the design in 1865 and 1866 ultimately led to the Remington-Rider rolling block Action, which was manufactured in versions of pistols, carbines and rifles, in both sporting and military configurations. The Remington rolling block was marketed both at home and abroad, and quickly became known as one of the strongest and most reliable action designs of the single-shot cartridge era. While domestic military contracts for rolling block arms were limited, foreign contracts were filled for literally dozens of countries, and far surpassed one and a half million rifles by the beginning of the 20th century. Eventually, the development of repeating arms significantly diminished the military usefulness of the Rolling Block design, yet these rifles were still being issued and used by major powers through the First World War, and by minor powers long after. To this day, sporting and target versions of Rolling Block rifles are manufactured and widely used.
Note that Geiger and Rider were designing actions in 1863 and 1864.
