494 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



none at all, and the unwieldy armor-clad battleship are also only the 

 children of experiment and have not yet passed the experimental 

 stage. These constitute one extreme of the problem, while the pneu- 

 matic torpedo gun is the other. In Ihe belief of the writer, the large- 

 bored cannon for throwing high explosives at high velocity, propelled 

 by smokeless gunpowder, instead of by compressed air, is a mean 

 between the extremes, which is destined to solve the problem; while 

 the present form of cannon and the armor-clad warship, on the one 

 hand, will be relegated to the rear, and the pneumatic gun, on the 

 other hand, will fall into oblivion. 



It was with a view to the solution of the problem of successfully 

 throwing high explosives from powder guns that the writer developed 

 the progressive smokeless powder, which has been adopted by the 

 United States Government, and by the use of which higher velocities 

 with lower pressures are secured than would be possible by any other 

 means. A special form of multi-perforated powder grains, invented 

 by the writer, for throwing aerial torpedoes from guns, makes it pos- 

 sible to so control the pressures, even when full charges are employed, 

 as to warrant the use of guns having a very large caliber and compara- 

 tively thin walls. I found that several high explosives could be made 

 sufficiently insensitive to withstand the shock of acceleration in powder 

 guns necessary to any desired velocity. 



There was, however, at that time, no means known for making a 

 fuse which should carry a sufficient quantity of detonative material, 

 such as fulminate of mercury or a similar compound, in order to 

 detonate effectually the insensitive high explosive charge on reaching 

 the target. When such a quantity of fulminate was employed, there 

 was danger of its being exploded by the shock of the propelling charge 

 of gunpowder, and in turn setting off the high explosive charge of the 

 shell and bursting the gun. 



I designed and patented a fuse in 1895, in which the detonator 

 was positioned at the rear of the shell, and completely outside of the 

 high explosive charge, with the whole strong wall of the shell base be- 

 tween it and the high explosive, in which position, should the fuse go 

 off prematurely from shock in the gun, the detonator would blow 

 out at the rear and no damage would be done, as the high explosive 

 would be beyond its reach. When, however, the projectile with its fuse 

 struck the target, the body of detonative compound was thrown vio- 

 lently forward in a guide tube and into the high explosive bursting 

 charge, due to the retardation of the projectile. 



To carry out the foregoing experiments, I built two powder mills 

 at Maxim, near Lakewood, N. J. It was there that the Maxim- 

 Schiipphaus smokeless powder was produced, and there I conducted 

 a large number of experiments with a long four-inch gun, having pres- 



