Great Inventions and Discoveries

by Willis Duff Piercy

The first cannon were clumsy and comparatively inefficient. They were made of wooden bars held together with iron hoops, and they shot balls of stone. Cannon of bronze were next made, and in the latter part of the fifteenth century iron cannon came into use. The next improvement was the production of cannon of steel, and for some years past the best artillery has been made of this material. After stone balls ceased to be used, round balls of iron were utilized. These in time gave way to cylindrical projectiles of steel. Originally cannon were loaded at the muzzle, but in recent years breech-loading devices have been developed, so that now all of the best modern guns are loaded from the rear.

Within the last twenty-five years, rapid-fire guns have been developed. These have a mechanism by which the breech is opened and closed again by a single motion of a lever. The loading with projectile and powder is also done with one motion. The rapidity of firing varies from two hundred shots per minute in the smallest guns to one shot in two minutes in the largest. The largest British cannon are nearly eighteen inches in calibre (diameter of bore), weigh a hundred tons, are thirty-five feet long, shoot a shell weighing nearly a ton, consume at each charge 450 pounds of powder, and have the power of penetrating solid iron armor plate to the depth of almost two feet, at a distance of one thousand yards. At least a year and a quarter is required for making one of the great, heavy guns, and often a longer time. The cost of constructing one of the largest English cannon is about $117,000, and it costs about $175 to fire the gun once. Some of the most powerful cannon may be relied upon to hit an object ten feet high at a distance of about nine thousand yards. In battle, however, owing to conditions of atmosphere and the limitations of human vision, fire would rarely be opened at a greater distance than three thousand yards, or not quite two miles.

Guns discharged by machinery have been introduced within the last half-century. The fire from machine guns is practically continuous. Several kinds have been invented and improved by various persons. One of the best types of this kind of ordnance is the Gatling gun, invented in 1860 by Dr. R. J. Gatling, of Indianapolis. It consists of a number of parallel barrels, usually ten, grouped around and fastened to a central shaft. Each barrel has its own mechanism for firing. As the barrels revolve, loaded cartridges are fed into them by machinery and the empty cartridges are ejected. By means of an automatic mechanism, the bullets may be scattered over such an arc in front as may be desired, or concentrated upon a narrower range. The Gatling gun can fire at the rate of 1200 shots per minute; it literally hails bullets.

The greatest name connected with the manufacture of modern cannon is that of Herr Alfred Krupp, of Germany, who was born at Essen in 1812 in humble circumstances. He erected the first Bessemer steel works in Germany in the city of his birth, and was the pioneer in the introduction of steel for the manufacture of heavy guns. He believed in the utility of steel when the great governments of the earth had no faith in it. The works at Essen cover in all about one thousand acres, and in them twenty thousand persons find employment. To Krupp Germany owed much, and was not negligent in paying him honor. His factory supplied artillery to nearly all the nations of Europe. He died in July, 1887, and was succeeded in the management of the works by his son Alfred, who also died recently. The plant still continues in operation.

Musketeer and Pikeman of the Early Seventeenth Century

The first portable or hand gun consisted of a simple iron or brass tube fastened to a straight stock of wood. Horsemen used the first guns, and fired them by placing the end of the stock against the breast and letting the barrel rest on a fork fastened to the saddle. The gun was discharged by applying a lighted match to a touch-hole in the top of the barrel. One kind of powder was used for priming; another for firing. Before the invention of cartridges, the powder and bullets were loaded separately at the muzzle, with some kind of packing between. The colonial rifles in America were loaded in this way. In a fight at close quarters, after a gun had been once discharged, the soldier had to fight with his sword. About the middle of the seventeenth century, the bayonet was invented, taking its name from the town of Bayonne, in France, where the inventor lived.

The lighted match which soldiers originally carried for igniting their guns gave way to the flint and steel; and in 1807 a Scotch clergyman named Forsyth obtained a patent which led to the invention of the percussion cap. This improvement revolutionized the mechanism of firearms. Many improvements have been made recently in arms, so that cartridges containing cap, powder, and projectile are fed automatically into guns so delicately constructed that they have great carrying power, precision, and rapidity.

From the dawn of human existence man has sought by some method or other to overcome natural barriers of water. The idea of the ship is as old almost as the race itself. The most primitive form of vessel was the raft. In prehistoric ages men made vessels by hollowing out the trunks of trees, either with fire or with such crude tools as they possessed. The Latin poet Virgil mentions "hollowed alders" used for boats, and indeed canoes were made from hollowed tree trunks as long ago as the Stone Age. The next step forward in the art of shipbuilding was the bark canoe. In countries where bark is scarce, small vessels were made of skins, felt, or canvas covered with pitch. In process of time, boats were made by fastening timbers together, and in this method the basic principle of modern shipbuilding was reached.

It is the relation of ships to purposes of war that interests us here. When the curtain rose for the drama of civilization in Egypt five thousand years ago, men were fighting at sea. The oldest ships of which we have knowledge were Egyptian. The vessels of war were then propelled by oarsmen, who were protected from the missiles of the enemy by planks. On the Egyptian war-galleys there was often a projecting bow to which was attached a metal head for ramming the vessels of the enemy.