Inventions in the Century

by William Henry Doolittle

As to the operation of those immense guns above referred to, which constitute principally sea-coast defences and the heavy armament for forts, gun carriages have been invented whereby the huge guns are quickly raised from behind immense embrasures by pneumatic or hydraulic cylinders, quickly fired (the range having been before accurately ascertained) and then as quickly lowered out of sight, the latter movement being aided by the recoil action of the gun.

It is essential that the full force of the gases of explosion shall be exerted against the base of the projectile, and therefore all escape of such gases be prevented. To this end valuable improvements in gas checks have been made,—one kind consisting of an annular canvas sack containing asbestos and tallow placed between the front face of the breech block and a mushroom-shaped piece, against which the explosion impinges.

As among projectiles and shells for cannon those have been invented which are loaded with dynamite or other high explosive, a new class of Compressed air ordnance has been started, in which air or gas is used for the propelling power in place of powder, whereby the chances of exploding such shells in the bore of the gun are greatly lessened.

The construction of metals, both for cannon to resist most intense explosives and for plates to resist the penetration of the best projectiles, have received great attention. They are matters pertaining to metallurgy, and are treated of under that head. The strife still continues between impenetrable armour plate and irresistible projectiles. Within the last decade or so shells have been invented with the design simply to shatter or fracture the plate by which the way is broken for subsequent shots. Other shells have been invented carrying a high explosive and capable of penetrating armour plates of great thickness, and exploding after such penetration has taken place.

A great accompaniment to artillery is “The Range Finder,” a telescopic apparatus for ascertaining accurately the location and distance of objects to be fired at.

Returning to small arms,—at the time percussion caps were invented in England, 1803-1814, John H. Hall of the United States invented a breech-loading rifle. It was in substance an ordinary musket cut in two at the breech, with the rear piece connected by a hinge and trunnion to the front piece, the bore of the two pieces being in line when clamped, and the ball and cartridge inserted when the chamber was thrown up. A large number were at once manufactured and used in the U.S. Army. A smaller size, called carbines, were used by the mounted troops. After about twenty years’ use these guns began to be regarded as dangerous in some respects, and their manufacture and use stopped, although the carbines continued in use to some extent in the cavalry. A breech-loading rifle was also invented by Colonel Pauly of France in 1812, and improved by Dreyse in 1835; also in Norway in 1838, and in a few years adopted by Sweden as superior to all muzzle-loading arms. About 1841 the celebrated “Needle Gun” was invented in Prussia, and its superiority over all muzzle-loaders was demonstrated in 1848 in the first Schleswig-Holstein war.

Cartridges, in which the ball and powder were secured together in one package, were old in artillery, as has been shown, but their use for small arms is a later invention. Metallic cartridges, made of sheet metal with a fulminate cap in one end and a rim on the end of the shell by which it could be extracted after the explosion, were invented by numerous persons in Europe and America during the evolution of the breech-loader. Combined metal case and paper patented in England in 1816, and numerous wholly metallic cartridge shells were patented in England, France, and United States between 1840 and 1860. M. Lefaucheux of France, in the later period, devised a metal gas check cartridge which was a great advance.

A number of inventors in the United States besides Hall had produced breech-loading small arms before the Civil War of 1861, but with the exception of Colt’s revolver and Sharp’s carbine, the latter used by the cavalry to a small extent, none were first adopted in that great conflict. Later, the Henry or Winchester breech-loading rifle and the Spencer magazine gun were introduced and did good service. But the whole known system of breech-loading small arms was officially condemned by the U.S. Military authorities previous to that war. The absence of machines to make a suitable cartridge in large quantities and vast immediate necessities compelled the authorities to ignore the tested Prussian and Swedish breech-loaders and those of their own countrymen and to ransack Europe for muskets of ancient pattern. These were worked by the soldiers under the ancient tactics, of load, ram, charge and fire, until a stray bullet struck the ramrod, or the discharge of a few rammed cartridges so over-heated the musket as to thereby dispense with the soldier and his gun for further service in that field. However, private individuals and companies continued to invent and improve, and the civil war in America revolutionised the systems of warfare and its weapons. The wooden walls of the navies disappeared as a defence after the conflict between the Monitor and the Merrimac, and muzzle-loading muskets became things of the past.

Torpedoes, both stationary and movable, then became a successful weapon of warfare. Soon after that war, and when the United States had adopted the Springfield breech-loading rifle, the works at Springfield were equipped with nearly forty different machines, each for making a separate part of a gun in great quantities. Many of these had been invented by Thomas Blanchard forty years before. That great inventor of labour-saving machinery had then designed machines for the shaping and making of gun stocks and for forming the accompanying parts. Blanchard was a contemporary of Hall, and Hall, to perfect his breech-loader, was the first to invent machines for making its various parts. His was the first interchangeable system in the making of small arms.

Army officers had come to regard “the gun as only the casket while the cartridge is the jewel;” and to this end J. G. Gill at the U.S. Arsenal at Frankford, Philadelphia, devised a series of cartridge-making machines which ranked among the highest triumphs of American invention.