166 
As a result of the enquiry, Mr. Whitworth was requested 
by Lord Hardinge in 1854 to furnish designs for a complete 
set of new machinery for making good rifles. This Mr. 
Whitworth declined to do, as he considered that experi- 
ments were required in order to determine what caused the 
difference between good and bad rifles, what was the proper 
diameter of the bore, what was the best form of bore, and 
what the best mode of rifling, before any machinery could 
be made which would be satisfactory. He offered to con- 
duct the experiments if the Government would pay the 
expense of erecting a shooting gallery for the purpose. 
This the Government at first declined to do, but ultimately 
they agreed to erect the gallery, not, however, before Mr. 
Whitworth had declared that he would rather defray the 
cost himself than proceed without the experiments. The 
Government required a million rifles at once. Birmingham 
could not supply them in less than twenty years with the 
means of production then in existence. The gallery was 
erected at The Firs, Fallowfield, near Manchester. It was 500 
yards long, 16 feet wide, and 20 feet high. The target was 
on wheels, so that it could be used for different ranges, and 
there were rests for fixing the rifle in taking aim. Thin paper 
screens were fixed at short intervals apart, and thus it was pos- 
sible to track the bullet throughout its entire course. As soon 
as the gallery was finished it was blown down by a great 
storm, and some delay took place before it could be again 
erected. The experiments did not begin until March, 1855. 
They showed that the Enfield rifle was wrong in every particu- 
lar. In the Enfield rifle the bore was cylindrical with grooves ; 
the new Whitworth rifle was hexagonal with the edges 
rounded ; in the Enfield the diameter was -577 inch, and tlie 
rifling had one turn in 78 inches. The new Whitworth rifle 
had a diameter of ‘45 inch, and the rifling one in twentj^ 
The experiments were carried on for more than two year,^, 
and the new rifle based thereon gave very much better 
