[Ulf Lidsman]

Do anyone have a source of when people started to put the bullet in a piece of cloth to prevent the bullet to fall out and the make better use of the energy?
Regards
Ulf

[Lafayette C Curtis]

We know that the earliest firearm drill manuals -- De Gheyn and stuff -- already mentioned it around the end of the 16th century. The practice itself was probably significantly older than that. But the opposite practice also survived for quite a long while, what with contemporary accounts of balls sized to be loaded "rowling in" (although it's still possible for wadding to be rammed down on top of the ball), English Civil War records stating that musket balls sometimes fell out of the muzzle before firing since the men either neglected to add some wadding or didn't ram it well enough, and of course 18th/19th-century accounts of tap-loading methods.

You might want to check late 15th- and early 16th-century Feuerwerbucher literature if you're really curious and can devote the time and effort needed to look into them. I suspect that's where you'd find the earliest mention of wadding for gunpowder weapons.