Abstract
IN few other manufactures has it been found necessary to search so deeply into the materials nature provides in order to find out the best and strongest, and then to apply it skilfully, so as fully to develop its strength, as in the manufacture of guns. The construction of the amazingly-powerful ordnance which modern naval warfare employs is pre-eminently a question of strength of material; indeed, it may be termed the question of strength of material. In nothing else does man employ forces even nearly so powerful and violent. The force of steam, even when doing its mightiest work, is but faint and small compared with that of the exploding charge of gunpowder that sends from the gun a 300lb. or 600lb. shot with a velocity which carries it through thick armour plates of wrought iron. A 600lb. shot will pierce twelve inches of iron at 200 yards distance. This gigantic force is imparted to the snot in the brief fraction of a second that it is moving down the barrel of the gun. Remembering that “the gain in power is loss in time,” and consequently that when the time is diminished the power is proportionately increased, we may form some conception how enormously great is that force which is exer ed within the breech of a heavy gun, and which is resisted by it every time in is fired. It is a force which, if turned into foot pounds, would represent the steam power not of a ship but of a navy. Yet all its work is to be done in the space of a few inches, and it must be surrounded with iron strong enough to resist it. Here we have the skill of man grappling with enormous difficulties, searching out the strongest and most suitable material that nature supplies, and exerting all his art to apply it to the utmost advantage. The construction of these exceedingly powerful guns has been entirely developed within the last few years. The gun now manufactured in Woolwich Arsenal is more unlike the gun of 1850 than the gun of 1850 is unlike that of Queen Elizabeth's reign. The progress of twenty years surpasses that of three centuries. And the change has not been so much in enlargement of size as in difference of construction. Queen I Elizabeth's pocket-pistol is not more unlike a 600-pounder in external appearance than in internal structure. The gun which is carried in the turret of one of our ironclads, and which, at a single discharge, expends as great a weight of powder and shot as the whole broadside of a good-sized frigate of our own early days, does not surpass the gun which peeped from that frigate's ports so much in size and power as in the superior scientific principles of its manufacture. We propose in the present article to give a general view of these principle. The method of manufacture will be first explained, and afterwards the principles which guide the selection of the best material. Although the material must be selected betore it is manufactured, yet a knowledge of the construction.of a heavy gun, and of the qualities sought by construction to be developed, will very greatty facilitate our comprehension of the reasons of choice and presence among the many kinds of iron that might be and that are used.
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The Construction of Heavy Artillery. Nature 3, 69–73 (1870). https://doi.org/10.1038/003069b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/003069b0