EVOLUTION OF THE MODERN HEAVY GUN. 155 



as development in ordnance was concerned. Our coast defenses 

 continued to be provided with nothing better than the Parrott 

 rifles and smooth-bore Rodman guns which had been in use dur- 

 ing the war. Meanwhile there had been great progress in Europe, 

 particularly in France and Germany. In 1885 a commission ap- 

 pointed by Congress reported the necessity for heavy expenditure 

 of money in order that this country be put into a condition of 

 reasonable readiness to repel foreign invasion. During the last 

 ten years appropriations to the amount of twenty million dollars 

 have been made to meet these needs, and the work of rehabilita- 

 tion is now well started. 



The rifled gun of to-day, as finished at the Water vliet Arsenal, 

 is constructed almost wholly of steel. This is of the best quality 

 that can be produced on a large scale in American foundries. It 

 is made by the " open-hearth " process, for the most part at Mid- 

 vale and Bethlehem in Pennsylvania. The forgings, after under- 

 going thorough official inspection and careful testing, are sent to 

 the great gun shops at Watervliet. Here the various parts com- 

 posing a gun are worked up, assembled together, and finished. 

 Before assignment for government service each gun is subjected 

 to a searching test, more severe than should reasonably be ex- 

 pected in actual use. 



The largest gun thus far designed at Watervliet is a rifle of 

 twelve-inch bore, forty feet in length, and fifty- seven tons in 

 weight. From such a gun an elongated steel-pointed projectile, 

 weighing one thousand pounds, or as much as an ordinary horse, 

 is shot with a charge of five hundred and twenty pounds of 

 powder. It receives an initial velocity of two thousand feet per 

 second, and would penetrate through rather more than two feet 

 of steel armor plate put in front of the muzzle. If shot into the 

 air at the proper elevation it would pass over a range of nearly 

 nine miles. Such a missile, thus fired from the lower end of New 

 York city, would pass over Central Park into the district beyond 

 Harlem River. This range would be covered so quickly that the 

 shot would reach its destination several seconds before the sound 

 of the explosion is heard at the same point. The initial energy of 

 the projectile would be sufficient to lift a weight of twenty-seven 

 thousand tons through a height of one foot. If this weight were 

 that of a spherical mass of gold, the heaviest popularly known 

 metal, its diameter would be nearly forty -six feet, and its value 

 eighteen billion dollars. This is more than a dozen times the 

 value of the total gold production of the world during the last 

 twenty years. 



The cost of suclj a gun is about sixty thousand dollars ; that 

 of the charge of powder, one hundred and seventy-five dollars; of 

 the armor-piercing projectile, three hundred and fifty dollars. 



