Guns, carriages, ammunition, platforms, artillery machines, including hydraulic-jacks of greater or less power, and other appliances, are supplied by requisition on the Ordnance Department in such number and variety as may be desired. The school is compelled to be indebted to the Ordnance Department for the occasional use, when necessary, of some of its instruments and apparatus for determining initial velocities, pressures, densities, etc.
Instruction in the practical course is designed to be as thorough as possible, and no officer leaves the school who has not become practically familiar with the tools of his trade, and able to use them intelligently.
A school for non-commissioned officers, and for such other enlisted men as may desire to avail themselves of its advantages, is also established. Every non-commissioned officer belonging to the five instruction batteries is required to attend the school for one year’s full course of instruction; all other enlisted men are permitted to attend. But their attendance upon school is entirely voluntary. Enlisted men of good character, and belonging to batteries not stationed at the post where the Artillery School is established, are also permitted to enjoy the benefits of one year’s course of instruction at the school. Such men, on their own application, are nominated by their battery commanders to their regimental commanders, on whose approval they are detached from their batteries, by orders from the head-quarters of the Army, and directed to report themselves in person to the commanding officer of the school. Of this last-named class of men twenty-two have undergone or are now undergoing instruction at the school.
The course of instruction for the non-commissioned officers is both practical and theoretical. The practical course is pursued pari passu with that of the commissioned officers, but is not carried to the same extent, being restricted to the scope of the necessary duties and requirements of non-commissioned officers of artillery, and to the average capacity of enlisted men of that grade in our Army.
The theoretical course of instruction for the non-commissioned officers embraces mathematics, history of the United States, geography, reading, and writing. The subject of mathematics includes the entire field of arithmetic, and, for the more advanced scholars, it is carried as far as equations of the second degree in algebra. The instruction in most of the branches is conducted as in the school for commissioned officers, by recitations at the blackboard, and by questions.
Since the commencement of the duties of the Artillery School one hundred and three enlisted men (chiefly non-commissioned officers) have gone through the entire course of practical and theoretical instruction for one year, and have been awarded by the staff of the school engraved certificates, signed by each of its members, setting forth that fact.
The following-named officers constitute the staff and instructors at the school at the present date, and, with the above-stated exceptions, have been thus on duty since its first establishment:
Commandant.—Colonel W. F. Barry, Second Artillery.
Superintendent of Theoretical Instruction.—Lieutenant-Colonel I. Roberts, Fourth Artillery.
Superintendent of Practical Instruction.—Major G. A. De Russy, Third Artillery.