174 
NATURE 
[ DECEMBER 20, 1906 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN 
ARTILLERY AND EXPLOSIVES. 
HIS volume is a re-publication of the many 
valuable papers and lectures which Sir Andrew 
Noble has contributed on the subject of artillery and 
explosives. Everyone recognises that there is no 
greater authority on these subjects than the author, 
and certainly the marvellous development of heavy 
weapons within the last forty years would have been 
impossible but for the solid scientific foundations 
which Noble and his colleagues laid down. His has 
been a career of activity almost unequalled, his in- 
vestigations extending from the period when he was 
secretary to the first Committee on Rifled Cannon 
(1858) down to the present time, when Sir Andrew 
Noble still serves on the Ordnance Research Board, 
and only last year contributed further valuable papers 
on the combustion of certain smokeless powders. 
As illustrating the development in gun construction 
which has talken place during this period, it may be 
mentioned that the heaviest gun in use when Sir 
Andrew first joined the service was a cast-iron 
weapon weighing 95 cwt. and firing a round shot of 
68 Ib. weight, with a muzzle velocity of 1600 feet per 
second. A comparison of this with the 
enormous velocities, energy, and range of 
modern weapons, such as form the heavy 
armament of our present-day battleships, 
clearly shows that these advances could 
only have been made as the result of 
careful scientific experiment. Noble, to- 
gether with his colleague the late Sir 
Frederick Abel, will ever be associated as 
the leading minds in this magnificent ex- 
perimental work. 
The apology which the author makes 
for this re-publication is therefore quite 
unnecessary, and all interested in the sub- 
ject will gladly welcome this volume, for 
the papers and lectures were delivered 
before such various societies that it is 
often difficult to obtain access to the whole 
of them. Necessarily there arises a cer- 
tain amount of repetition, but, as pointed 
out, the elimination of this would prac- 
tically have meant re-writing the work, so 
that the papers appear precisely in their 
original form. Not only will the 
collection of them prove of value to the technical 
man, but several will appeal to the general reader, 
notably those on ‘‘ The Rise and Progress of Rifled 
Naval Artillery,’’ and ‘“‘ Mechanical Science in Rela- 
tion to the Naval and Military Services.”’ 
The preface alone is most interesting, and might 
well be quoted at length. Two points only, how- 
ever, which throw light on the objection to any 
change in the old days, may be noted. After the 
introduction of rifled artillery, a dinner was given 
by the Royal Artillery mess to the late Lord Arm- 
strong. After eulogising the work done by the guest 
of the evening, the president concluded with the 
emphatic statement, ‘‘for myself I am _ radically 
opposed to any change.’’ Again later, when Artillery 
officers were pressing for the introduction of a naval 
gun weighing seven tons, the naval officers ‘‘ doubted 
whether so heavy a gun could be carried on board 
ship,’? and a compromise was effected by introducing 
a gun of 63 tons. Yet we have had vessels, the 
Sans Pareil and Benbow (both long since obsolete), 
carrying two I1o-ton guns! 
2 By Sir Andrew Noble, Bart., K-C.B., 
1 * Artillery and Explosives ” 
F.R.S., &c. Pp. xvi-+s548. (London: John Murray, 1906.) Price 21s. net. 
NO. 1938, VOL. 75] 
The first paper deals with the ‘‘ Application of the 
Theory of Probabilities to Artillery Practice,’’ and 
afforded valuable information as to the superiority of 
rifled ordnance. The paper is a mathematical one 
based on actual firing results, the object being to 
determine ‘‘ for each gun, that area within which, if 
a given number of shots were fired, half of the num- 
ber might be expected to fall.”’ This paper is 
followed by one on ‘‘Experiments with Navez’s 
Electroballistic Apparatus.’’? Other papers of similar 
type are those ‘‘On the Ratio between the Forces 
tending to produce Translation and Rotation in the 
Bores of Rifled Guns ’”’ and ‘‘On the Pressures re- 
quired to give Rotation to Rifled Projectiles,’’ in 
which the relative behaviour with uniform and para- 
bolic rifling is critically examined. 
To the man of science, as distinct from the artil- 
lerist, undoubtedly the researches on the changes 
taking place during combustion of explosives, the 
measurement of temperatures, pressures, and velocities 
will be of the greatest interest. These researches may 
be said to commence with a paper ‘‘ On the Tension of 
Fired Gunpowder ”’ (1871), although part i. of the now 
classical ‘‘ Researches on Explosives’ did not appear 
until 1875. As already mentioned, only last year a 
EXPLOSION VESSEL. 
Fic. 1.—Vessel employed for small charges, to enable the gaseous products to be collected 
we andexamined. ‘he firing plug is shown at F ; the crusher gauges for determining the 
pressure at H, H; the escape valve for the gases at J. 
further contribution under this title was published in 
the Proceedings of the Royal Society (followed 
later by a note making certain corrections on tem- 
perature estimations), which greatly extended our 
knowledge on the variation in the products, temper- 
ature, &c., when certain modern smokeless powders 
are fired under varying conditions. It is one of the 
few points on which we may offer criticism that these 
two papers are not included in the present volume, 
and unless some restrictions as to re-publication pre- 
vented, it is difficult to understand why they were 
omitted, for they are certainly not the least valuable 
of the series. 
When Noble and Abel first took up the examination 
of gunpowder, the knowledge on the subject was 
simply chaotic. Owing to faulty methods, unjusti- 
fiable assumptions, and other causes, the most diverse 
ideas as to the pressure and temperature developed 
on firing were held. Rodman, with his well-known 
“cutter gauge,’’ had done valuable work, but here, 
as shown in an early paper in this volume, error arose 
from inertia of the cutter employed. For the ex- 
amination of the products on firing, charges occupy- 
ing but a small portion of the space in the experi- 
