Johann Nicolaus von Dreyse (20 November 1787 – 9 December 1867) was a German firearms inventor and manufacturer.

He is most famous for submitting the Dreyse needle gun in 1836 to the Prussian army, which was adopted for service in December 1840 as the Leichte Perkussions-Gewehr M 1841 – a name deliberately chosen to mislead about the rifle's mechanism – later renamed Zündnadelgewehr M 1841 in 1855.

Dreyse worked from 1809 to 1814 in the Parisian gun factory of Jean-Samuel Pauly, a Swiss who designed several experimental breech-loading military rifles.

For example, in 1869 Switzerland adopted the bolt-action Vetterli rifle, which was a tube-magazine rimfire metallic cartridge repeater.

Great Britain and the U.S. evolved from muzzle-loaders to metallic-cartridge breech-loaders, but with systems other than bolt action, during that same period.