[66] The author of the Études sur l’Artillerie places emphasis on the importance of the substitution of cast iron for stone projectiles, as augmenting the power of artillery. Stone balls broke to pieces on impact with masonry, and were of small destructive power except when in large mass, as projected from the largest bombards. He claims the introduction of iron shot, the use of trunnions for elevating, and the standardization of calibres, for the French artillery of Charles VIII, who in 1495 descended on Italy.
[67] Favé.
[68] Lieut.-Col. Hime, R.A.: The Progress of Field Artillery.
[69] Owen: Lectures on Artillery.
[70] Whewell: History of the Inductive Sciences.
[71] Encycl. Brit., 11th Edition.
[72] This project, however, is mentioned of an engine called by him “a semi-omnipotent engine,” the subject of the 98th invention: “an engine so contrived, that working the Primum mobile forward or backward, upward or downward, circularly or cornerwise, to and fro, straight, upright or downright, yet the pretended operation continueth and advanceth, none of the motions above-mentioned hindering, much less stopping the other.”
This engine is obviously not the same as that described as the sixty-eighth invention.
[73] A well-known story, quoted at length in the Memoirs of Sir John Barrow, connected de Caus with the Marquis of Worcester in dramatic fashion. The Marquis was being conducted through the prison of the Bicêtre in Paris when his attention was attracted by the screams of an old madman who had made a wonderful discovery of the power of steam, and who had so importuned Cardinal Richelieu that he had been incarcerated as a nuisance.
“This person,” said the insolvent Lord Worcester after conversing with him, “is no madman; and in my country, instead of shutting him up, they would heap riches upon him. In this prison you have buried the greatest genius of your age.”