The Swiss also followed events in America during their Civil War with great interest and together with all the other European Nations, realised that the muzzle loading rifle fitted in the same category as the dinosaur and the breech loading rifle was the way of the future. As with most other nations, the Swiss also had large quantities of suddenly antiquated rifles and like their French counterparts, they considered converting these to breech loaders instead of designing new rifles from scratch. The Swiss took their Model 1842 muzzle loaders that were already once modified in 1859 and converted them to the 1866 American designer, Isaac Milbank patent that was adopted by Rudolf Amsler in the Swiss design. Like the Dutch Snider conversion and the French Tabatière, this was always going to be a short term measure. With strides made in firearm design, the Swiss replaced these large, obsolete rifles with their 10.4mm Vetterli rifle by Swiss arms designer Friedrich Vetterli, who was at that time the director of the Schweizerischen Industrie-Gesellschaft (SIG). it was similar to the Italian version, except for some reason the Swiss stuck to the rimfire version, whereas the Italian adopted the center-fire version.