PROCEEDINGS 



OF THE 



AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 



HELD AT PHILADELPHIA 

 FOR PROMOTING USEFUL KNOWLEDGE 



Vol. L May-August, 1911 No. 199 



NOTES ON CANNON— FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH 



CENTURIES. 



By CHARLES E. DANA. 

 (Read April 20, 1911.) 



There can be seen to-day in the fair city of Florence, on the Arno, 

 an old yellow parchment, upon which is transcribed an edict dated 

 February 11, 1326. This, expressed in the monkish Latin of the 

 day, gives authority to the Gonfalonier, the Priors, and twelve 

 " good men," to superintend the manufacture of " palloctas ferras 

 et canones de metallo," balls of iron and cannon of metal, which 

 may possibly, in this case mean brass. What these cannon for the 

 defence of Florence were like, or what they did, we shall never 

 know, but with them the real history of ordnance begins ; these little 

 pop-guns are the ancestors of the 14- and 15-inch B. L. R. (breech- 

 loading rifle) of today; the fathers threw a wee projectile a hun- 

 dred or two yards ; the degenerate oflfspring throw a shell weighing 

 about a ton, fifteen or twenty miles. That the Florentine guns were 

 the very first no one would assert, but with our present information, 

 only legend lies back of them. 



Of course the credit for the invention is given to the Chinese. 

 There is not time here to do more than state that the Institutes of 

 Timiir, about the middle of the fourteenth century, although they 



PROC. AMER. PHIL. SOC, L. I99 J, PRINTED JUNE 26, I9II. 



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