GUNNERY. 
and to certify to the mafter of the ordnance the fufficiency 
of an ie recommended to be one of his majefty’s 
The. ‘gunner, fir J. Moore obferves, fhould know his 
pieces and their names, which are taken from the bea 
of the bore, the names of the feveral parts of a piece 
of ordnance, how to tertiate his gun, and how to difpart 
it, &c. 
Gunwer’ s Level. See Lr a 
GUNNERY, the art of thoo ing with guns and mor- 
tars,'#. ¢. of charging, oe wa exploding thofe fire- 
arms to the bett advant ta 
ing, &c. 
ae arts of gunnery are brought under mathematical 
confideration, which, among panivese wed are called ab- 
folutely by the name gunnery ; viz. the method of elevating 
or raifing the piece to any given angle, and of tee 
its range ; or of raifing or directing it "ts: as it may hit 
mark or objeét pro ropofed. 
Ke Diicae is chiefly ufed in ee part of gunnery are 
the callipers or gunners’ compaffes, quadrant, and level ; 
the methods of applying which, ee under thofe articles ; 
he ik aasdcaid principles and laws of gunnery, fee 
PROJECTILE. 
With regard to the hiftory of this part of mixed mathe- 
matical {cience we may obferve, that torr before the inven- 
tion of gunnery, properly fo called, the art of artillery was 
in attual practice ; 33 one of the ake of Judah, 8c0 
ears before the Chriftian era, ereéted, on the towers and 
ulwarks of Jerufalem, engines ae for vee An ar- 
rows and great ftones for the Etec of that city. 2 Chro 
XXvi. I 
Suck machines were afterwards known to eh Greeks 
by means pring 
ftrongly twifted corda e formed of tough and elaftic ani- 
ubftances, no lefs terrible than the cannon and mor- 
ire 
enth centuries; nor is it pb 
they were niall laid afide, till gunpowder and 
modern ordnance fuperfeded their tifer 
The firft application of gunpowder to. military a 
feems to have been foon after the year : 
opofal of Friar Bacon, about the year 1280, for applyin 
ks pactilaote explofion to the deftru@tion of armies mute 4 
give the firft hint; an hwartz, to whom the i invention 
of gunpowder has been erroneoutly afcribed, might ha 
been the firft who actuall applied i it in this way ; 3 for, it is 
faid, that having poun erials of this mixture in a 
mortar, which he afterwards covered with a Rive: a ais 
of fire ac flew into the mortar, and the ex 
blowed he ftone toa bon semiege rhea 
We thall here onl the prohibition of fir of fire-arms 
in the code of Geno laws printed y the Eaft India com- 
any in 1776, which feems to confirm the fufpicion fug- 
efted by a paffage in Quintus Curtius, that Alexander 
the vee nd fome weapons of that kind in India. Can- 
non, in idiom, is called thet-aghnee, or the 
weapon that kills a hundred men at once, See CANNon, | 
1300, for ues tHe 
means i examining thei nequalities which they would << = 
However, the firft pieces of artillery, charged with guns 
powder and ftone bullets of a prodigious weight, were of 
very clumfy and inconvenient fize and ftruéture. (See Can- 
non.) Thus, when Mahomet the — befieged Contftan- 
tinople in 1453, he battered the walls with ftones of this — 
kind, and with pieces, fome of which were of the calibre 
of 1200 pounds, and which could not be fired more 
four timesa day. The matter and fabric of thefe rial 
manageable, and particularly for brafs cannon, about the 
elofe of the fourteenth century. The formation of ae 
if we except the ingenious method of boring cannon, not 
long fince invented, hath been little improved within the 
two hundred sre 
% bechitins, by firft cutting off the whole wall as low as pol- 
fi i rt is attempted to be beat down, 
feems alfo tu be a confiderable i improvement in the practical. 
part of artillery ; as is alfo that difpofition of artillery 
called the battery & ricochet, fir ufed in 1692. But the 
theory of Lipset has made flower advances than the me- 
chanica Ip 
equations, y afcribed to oardan; ot ofetledly i 
cuffed the t = of projectiles, in his Nova Scientia, printed 
~ Venice in 15373 andin his Quefiti & Inventioni diverli, 
1546; and in another work tr: a into Englith, under. 
as title of Tepe 
0 the opinion of his con- 
temporari ies, that no part of the aa deferibed _ by a cannon- 
ball is a right line, though the curvature is in fome 
fo {mall as not to need attention. = ee m is likewife aferibed 
the invention of the gunner’s quadr 
However, nothing decifive was eae sli ered as to ‘the’ nae 
ture of the eurve defcribed by fuch bodies. till the time. of 
Galileo, who difeovered the law 
a 
of a greater or lefs amplitude, by the time it ¢ 
level of the place from which it was 
le, thier extended this Sates by. ovine that 
above or "below the plane of its por 
and 
) w 
deferibed a parabola of a. ora fmaller am~ 
oS Chidthons wes : ag 
of the des ice and pea mt Sette ae 
