172 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [ANNO 1797. 



vented its enormous and almost incredible force from being discovered so it is 

 evident, that the readiest way to increase its effects is to contrive matters so as to 

 accelerate its inflammation and combustion. This may be done in various ways, 

 but the most simple and most effectual manner of doing it would, in my opinion 

 be to set fire to the charge of powder by shooting, through a small opening, the 

 flame of a smaller charge into the midst of it. I contrived an instrument on this 

 principle for firing cannon 3 or 4 years ago, and it was found on repeated trials to 

 be useful, convenient in practice, and not liable to accidents. It also supersedes 

 the necessity of using priming, of vent tubes, port-fires, and matches; and on 

 that account I imagined it might be of use in the British navy. Whether it has 

 been found to be so or not I have not yet heard*. 



Another infallible method of increasing very considerably the effect of gunpowder 

 in fire-arms of all sorts and dimensions, would be to cause the bullet to fit the bore 

 exactly, or without windage, in that part of the bore at least where the bullet 

 rests on the charge-j"". for when the bullet does not completely close the opening 

 of the chamber, not only much of the elastic fluid generated in the first moment 

 of the combustion of the charge escapes by the sides of the bullet, but, what is 

 of still greater importance, a considerable part of the unconsumed powder is blown 

 out of the chamber along with it, in a state of actual combustion, and getting 

 before the bullet continues to burn on as it passes through the whole length of the 

 bore, by which the motion of the bullet is much- impeded. The loss of force 

 arising from this cause is, in some cases almost incredible; and it is by no means 

 difficult to contrive matters so as to render it very apparent, and also to prevent it. 

 If a common horse pistol be fired with a loose ball, and so small a charge of 

 powder that the ball shall not be able to penetrate a deal board so deep as to stick 

 in it when fired against it from the distance of 6 feet; the same ball, discharged 

 from the same pistol, with the same charge of powder, may be made to pass quite 

 through one deal board, and bury itsejf in a 2d placed behind it, merely by pre- 

 venting the loss of force which arises from what is called windage; as I have found 

 more than once by actual experiment. 



I have in my possession a musket, from which, with a common musket charge 

 of powder, I fire 1 bullets at once with the same velocity that a single bullet is 

 discharged from a musket on the common construction, with the same quantity of 

 powder. And, what renders the experiment still more striking, the diameter of 

 the bore of my musket is exactly the same as that of a common musket, except 

 only in that part of it where it joins the chamber, in which part it is just so much 



* By many accurate experiments made by the Artillery at Woolwich, it has been found that firing the 

 charge of powder in different parts of it, makes no sort of difference in the effects, whether it is fired 

 in the middle, or at either end, or at the upper side or under side, &c. 



+ This is no new discovery or observation. It was particularly insisted on in the paper on the Force 

 of Fired Gunpowder, in the Philos. Trans, anno 1778, p. 50, &c. And indeed, it is by taking advan- 

 tage of this circumstance solely, that the ordnance called carronades have acquired such boasted effects.. 



