the Force of Fired Gunpowder, 1 1 5 



The Idea of this method of determining the force of 

 fired gunpowder occurred to me many years ago ; but a 

 'very expensive and troublesome apparatus being neces- 

 sary in order to put it in execution, it was not till the 

 year 1792, when, being charged with the arrangement of 

 the army of his most Serene Highness the Elector 

 Palatine, reigning Duke of Bavaria, and having all the 

 resou4-ces of the military arsenal, and a number of very 

 ingenious workmen at my command, with the permis- 

 sion and approbation of his most Serene Electoral 

 Highness, I set about making the experiments which I 

 shall now describe ; and as they are not only important 

 in themselves and in their results, but as they are, I 

 believe, the first of the kind that have been made, I 

 shall be very particular in my account of them, and also 

 of the apparatus used in making them. 



One difficulty being got over, that of setting fire to 

 the powder without any communication with the external 

 air, by causing the heat employed for that purpose to 

 pass through the solid substance of the barrel, it only 

 remained to apply such a weight to an opening made in 

 the barrel as the whole force of the generated elastic 

 fluid should not be able to lift or displace ; but in doing 

 this many precautions were necessary. For, first, as the 

 force of gunpowder is so very great, it was necessary to 

 employ an enormous weight to confine it; for although 

 by diminishing the size of the opening the weight would 

 be lessened in the same proportion, yet it was necessary 

 to make this opening of a certain size, otherwise the 

 experiments would not have been satisfactory ; and it 

 was necessary to make the support or base upon which 

 the barrel was placed very massy and solid, to prevent 

 the errors which would unavoidably have arisen from its 

 want of solidity or from its elasticity. 



