Inventions in the Century

by William Henry Doolittle

In the sixteenth century Europe was busy in adopting these and other changes. Cannon were made of all sizes and calibres, but were not arranged in battle with much precision. Case shot were invented in Germany but not brought into general use. Shells were invented by the Italians and fired from mortars, but their mode of construction was preserved in great secrecy. The early breech-loaders had been discarded, as it was not known how to make the breech gas-tight, and the explosions rendered the guns more dangerous to their users than to the enemy.

In the seventeenth century Holland began to make useful mortar shells and hand grenades. Maurice and Henry Frederick of Nassau, and Gustave Adolphus, made many improvements in the sizes and construction of cannon. In 1674, Coehorn, an officer in the service of the Prince of Orange, invented the celebrated mortar which bears his name, and the use of which has continued to the present time. The Dutch also invented the howitzer, a short gun in which the projectiles could be introduced by hand. About the same time Comminges of France invented mortars which threw projectiles weighing 550 pounds. In this part of that century also great improvements were made under Louis XIV. Limbers, by which the front part of the gun carriage was made separable from the cannon part and provided with the ammunition chest; the prolonge, a cord and hook by which the gun part could be moved around by hand; and the elevating screw, by which the muzzle of the gun could be raised or depressed,—were invented.

In the early part of the eighteenth century it was thought by artillerists in England that the longer the gun the farther it would carry. One, called “Queen Ann’s Pocket Piece” still preserved at Dover, is twenty-five feet long and carries a ball only twenty-five pounds in weight. It was only after repeated experiments that it was learned that the shorter guns carried the projectile the greatest distance.

The greatest improvements in the eighteenth century were made by Gribeauval, the celebrated French artillerist, about 1765. He had guns made of such material and of such size as to adapt them to the different services to which they were to be put, as field, siege, garrison, and sea coast. He gave greater mobility to the system by introducing six-pound howitzers, and making gun carriages lighter; he introduced the system of fixed ammunition, separate compartments in the gun carriages for the projectiles, and the charges of powder in paper or cloth bags or cylinders; improved the construction of the elevating screw, adapted the tangent scale, formed the artillery into horse batteries, and devised new equipments and a new system of tactics.

It was with Gribeauval’s improved system that “Citizen Bonaparte, young artillery officer,” took Toulon; with which the same young “bronze artillery officer” let go his great guns in the Cul-de-Sac Dauphin against the church of St. Roch; on the Port Royal; at the Theatre de la Republique; “and the thing we specifically call French Revolution is blown into space by it, and became a thing that was.”

It was with this system that this same young officer won his first brilliant victories in Italy. When the fruit of these victories had been lost during his absence he reappeared with his favorite artillery, and on the threshold of the century, in May 1800, as “First Consul of the Republic” re-achieved at Marengo the supremacy of France over Austria.

As to small arms, as before suggested, they doubtless had their origin in the practice of the Chinese in throwing fire balls from bamboo barrels by the explosion of light charges of powder, as illustrated to this day in what are known as “Roman Candles.” Fire-crackers and grenades were also known to the Chinese and the Greeks.

Among ancient fire-arms the principal ones were the arquebus, also bombardelle, and the blunderbuss. They were invented in the fourteenth century but were not much used until the fifteenth century. These guns for the most part were so heavy that they had to be rested on some object to be fired. The soldiers carried a sort of tripod for this purpose. The gun was fired by a slow-burning cord, a live coal, a lit stick, or a long rod heated at one end, and called a match. The blunderbuss was invented in Holland. It was a large, short, funnel-shaped muzzle-loader, and loaded with nails, slugs, etc. The injuries and hardships suffered by the men who used it, rather than by the enemy, rendered its name significant. Among the earliest fire-arms of this period one was invented which was a breech-loader and revolver. The breech had four chambers and was rotated by hand on an arbour parallel to the barrel. The extent of its use is not learned. To ignite the powder the “wheel-lock” and “snap-haunce” were invented by the Germans in the sixteenth century. The wheel lock consisted of a furrowed wheel and was turned by the trigger and chain against a fixed piece of iron on the stock to excite sparks which fell on to the priming. The snap-haunce, a straight piece of furrowed steel, superseded the wheel-lock. The sixteenth century had got well started before the English could be induced to give up the cross-bow and arrow, and adopt the musket. After they had introduced the musket with the snap-haunce and wooden ramrod, it became known, in the time of Queen Elizabeth, as the “Brown Bess.”

The “old flint-lock” was quite a modern invention, not appearing until the seventeenth century. It was a bright idea to fix a piece of flint into the cock and arrange it to strike a steel cap on the priming pan when the trigger was fired; and it superseded the old match, wheel-lock, and snap-haunce. The flint-lock was used by armies well into the nineteenth century, and is still in private use in remote localities. As the arquebus succeeded the bow and arrow, so the musket, a smooth and single-barrel muzzle-loader with a flint-lock and a wooden ramrod, succeeded the arquebus. Rifles, which were the old flint-lock muskets with their barrels provided with spiral grooves to give the bullet a rotary motion and cause it to keep one point constantly in front during its flight, is claimed as the invention of Augustin Kutler of Germany in 1520, and also of Koster of Birmingham, England, about 1620. Muskets with straight grooves are said to have been used in the fifteenth century.

The rifle with a long barrel and its flint-lock was a favourite weapon of the American settler. It was made in America, and he fought the Indian wars and the war of the Revolution with it.