108 A?nSTJAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



1845 I made upwards of twenty cannon of this material (wrong'ht- 

 iroti). Th(\v wore all made up oF rings, or short hollow eylln- 

 ders, welded together enihvise ; each ring was made of bars 

 wound upon an arbor spirally, like winding a ribbon upon a blocic, 

 and, being welded and shaj)ed in dies, were joined endwise when 

 in the furnace at a welding heat, and afterwards pressed together 

 in a mould l)y a hvtirost:itie press of one thousand tons' force. 



*' 'Finding in tiie early stage of tlie manufacture that the soft- 

 ness of the wrought-iron was a serious defect, I formed those 

 made afterwards with a lining of steel, the wrought-iron l)ars 

 being winnid upon a previously formed st<'el ring. Eight of these 

 guns were six-i)ounders, of the conmion United St;ites bronze 

 pattern, and eleven were thirty-two-poundors, of about eighty 

 inches' length of bore, and one thousand nine hundred pounds' 

 weight.' 



" The soundness and value of this principle of construction were 

 fully conru'mcd in England by the ex[)eriments of Sir William 

 Armstrong in l.'^oo, and attested by his evidence before a com- 

 mittee of the House of Commons in 18G:5. lie there describes liis 

 own gun as one ' with a steel tube surrounded with coiled cyl- 

 inders,' — as 'peculiar in being mainly comjiosed of tubes, or 

 pipes, or cylinders, formed by coiling spirally long l)ars of iron into 

 tubes aiiil weliling them on the edges, as is done; in gnn-barnds.' 

 His indirect testimony to the originality of Mr. Tread well's ]n-ocess 

 is equally clear, being that, within his knowledge, no cann(m had 

 ever been made ui)on this principle until he made his own in 

 18.')'), he lieing, as we must suppose, ignorant of what Mr. Tread- 

 well had done thirteen years before. The statement of Mr. An- 

 derson (witness before the Commons' Select CommittcM;), made 

 before the Institute of Civil Engineers in 1860, is equally explicit 

 as to the nature and value of this method of constructing cannon. 

 And, linally, the high estimate of its importance abroad is shown 

 not only In' the honors and emoluments conferred by the British 

 government on the re-inventor, but still more by the actual ailop- 

 tion of this gun as the most efficient arm yet produced. For it 

 must be borne in mind that the faults or failures, complete or par- 

 tial, of the Armstrong and similar guns, are not of the cannon 

 itself, as originally constructed, but of breech-loading contriv- 

 ances, of the lead coating of the projectile, or of other subsidiary 

 matters. 



" That our colleague's invention, the value of which is now so 

 clearly established, should have been so generally unacknowl- 

 edged by inventors abroad is his misfortune, not his fault. For, 

 not only were his guns made and tested here, and their strength 

 as clearly demonstrated before 1845 as they have been since, not 

 only was a full account of the process and of the results published 

 here in that year, but a French translation of his pamphlet was 

 jjublished in Paris, in 1848, l)y a professor in the school of artil- 

 lery at Vincennes; and Mr. Treadwell's patent, with full specifi- 

 cations, was iniblished in England before Sir William Armstrong 

 began his experiments. 



" The difficulties to be overcome in making such a gun, — great 



