250 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE 



dollars worth of war material. Besides 10,000 cannon it 

 made 3000 airplanes, fifty million projectiles, and great nun> 

 bers of warships, torpedo boats, and submarines. 



To illustrate the British metallurgical contributions my story 

 may well give some examples of the work of one of the very 

 most interesting figures in modern metallurgy, Sir Robert Had- 

 field, inventor, general of investigators, vitalizer of societies, 

 astonishing captain-major of industry, and inexhaustible foun- 

 tain of enthusiasm to all about him. 



Of his manganese steel helmets I tell in a later section. 

 Other important war uses of this material were found, of which 

 I may not tell. 



In the terrible autumn of 1914 he was asked by the War 

 Office to install several factories specially planned for making 

 the high-explosive shells of which the Allied armies were in 

 such grave need. It was characteristic of his exuberant driv- 

 ing power that he built two plants and had them delivering 

 finished shells in one case in 5 months and 3 days and in the 

 other case in less than six months after beginning to build. 

 He also built new plants and converted existing plants, giving 

 them a weekly capacity of over 8,000 of the important 9.2 in. 

 Howitzer shells. Before the war a weekly production of 200 

 such shells was about the normal. 



The flexibility with which he adapted his works to new and 

 very difficult products is illustrated by his making 3000 gun 

 tubes of calibers running up to 9.2 inches, and 3400 trench 

 howitzers, though he had never made either guns or howitzers 

 before March, 1917. 



It was by such feats that the steel makers of Great Britain 

 and France enabled their battered armies to hold back the 

 German flood till the general ammunition campaign became 

 effective later on. 



Sir Robert's firm made nearly 2^ million shells of about 20 

 different kinds for the British Army, and I million of 37 differ- 

 ent kinds for their navy, including the immense armor piercing 

 shells, weighing a ton and a half each, for the 1 8-inch monitor 



