THE SLING, BOW, AND OTHER WEAPONS 



143 



machine-made ammunition manufactured in an American arsenal 

 the 3-foot bull's-eye was hit 176 times in succession at a range of 

 800 yards, and 41 times in succession at 1,200 yards, over two- 

 thirds of a mile. 



The early cannon were made of wood, later of brass, were 

 muzzle-loaders, touched off with a blazing torch, and the shot were 

 at first stones, then solid iron balls. They were small, primitive 

 affairs, inaccurate in their fire, and were first used in Europe 

 with no expectation of killing people but merely to scare the 

 horses on which the armored knights were riding. In the fa- 

 mous "Constitution" that won renown in our War of 1812, the 

 guns were about as long as a 

 man, mounted on crude, wooden- 

 wheeled carriages, and the muzzle 

 was lowered by driving a wedge- 

 shaped, wooden block in under 

 the butt of the gun (see Fig. 56). 



The improvements in the 

 cannon followed along the same 

 lines as the changes in the small 

 arm. Breech-loading took the 

 place of muzzle-loading. The 

 round shot was changed to a 

 pointed cylinder which was given a rotary motion by spiral grooves 

 in the barrel. Now the great guns are sometimes 75 feet long, and 

 throw a shell that weighs more than a ton 20 miles. The bore of 

 such a gun is 12, 14, or 1 6 inches. Naturally, such a gun could 

 only be manufactured when machinery had been devised for 

 handling it, forging it, boring it accurately. Ways have to be 

 devised also for strengthening it, for the pressures of elastic 

 gases formed by firing the charges of powder hundreds of 

 pounds are terrific. The gun must resist a bursting pressure of 

 50 tons or more per square inch. 



The same elasticity of gases that is used to work such awful 

 devastation in war is also immensely serviceable to man in peace. 



FIG. 56. An old cannon on its 

 wooden carriage. 



