376 Mr. Mallet on the Physical Conditions 



A more injudicious and unscientific construction it would be difficult to imagine, or 

 one that more thoroughly exposes the barbarism of the established notion as to absorbing 

 recoil, — seven tons of useless material, to be for ever after carried about to absorb the recoil of a 

 machine, the total weight of which was 9i tons, while that of the only part of it of any 

 real use was 2-^ tons ; and this exclusive of any gun-carriage whatever. 



The gun was intended to have been proved with single, and then double, spherical 

 shot. Several elongated shot, of various forms, had been provided for trial with it ; and 

 it appears that, confident in the presumed enormous strength of the material, the first shot 

 fired was with a charge of 25 lbs. of powder, and one elongated shot of 260 lbs. weight. The 

 form of the shot was oylindro-conoidal, with a recess of about J-inch deep, taken out for 

 2 inches wide, or so, round the cylindrical part at the rere of the shot, and replaced by a 

 wroucht-irou ring of the same size, and with the rere edges bevilled away towards the 

 inside, under the idea that it should act like a piston-cup, and close all windage at the 

 moment of explosion. 



The oun burst at the first discharge, as it should have been foreseen it must do, break- 

 ino- into ancrular, glassy, irregular fragments, like those shown in lighter lines, and shatter- 

 inn- the chemise also into two or three huge pieces. The muzzle portion of the gun (all 

 nearly that was outside the chemise) remained entire, and was thrown forward in the usual 

 way. The shot was not found for some time, and then beyond the butt, over which it had 

 flown. On examination, it was found (with some surprise) that the wrought-iron ring upon 

 it, had been ripped off, and had either been driven forward, or had so crushed the substance 

 of the cast-iron shot, immediately in advance of its forward edge, that the metal was here 

 torn away and gone, leaving a sort of inclined plane, reaching some halfway along the sides 

 of the shot towards its point. 



The parties interested in Mr. Krupp's manufacture are of opinion that this shot, from 

 its malformation, stuck or became wedged in the gun, and that the latter burst from this 

 cause, and this only. In this opinion I cannot coincide. The inertia of an elongated shot, 

 of such an enormous weight, in proportion to its diameter (eight inches), was so great, 

 that no doubt the wrought-iron ring may have been driven forward upon it, crushing and 

 disintegrating the sides of the cast-iron shot before the latter began to move at all ; but 

 this would not cause it to jam in the gun; on the contrary, the moment the shot itself 

 bcf an to move, it would pass through, as it were, and free itself from all this debiis, which 

 would be swept along with it out of the muzzle. But the mischief was already done, the 

 CTun was already ruptured, before the shot had probably moved at all ; this is the great and 

 irremediable evil of elongated shot. 



But, would the gun have stood an equal charge of powder and of iron, with equal 



P 

 windage, even of spherical shot? I believe not. If, from the formula, i— V"-, we calcu- 



r g 



late the maximum pressure per square inch on the gun, assuming its caliber 8 inches, or. 



