192 
MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS OF 
BRONZE STEEL. 
BY 
CAPTAIN J. F. OWEN, R.A. 
Experiments lately carried out in Austria, at tlie instance of General 
Yon Uchatius,* with an alloy of copper and tin, cast under certain 
conditions, and termed by him “ bronze steel/-’ are of so interesting a 
nature, and may have so important an issue that no apology is needed 
for giving in this paper a resume of the results thus far obtained. 
Before describing these experiments, it may not be amiss to review 
shortly the employment of bronze for the construction of rifled 
ordnance, to show why it has fallen into disfavour for that purpose, 
and to point out the reasons which in recent times have led to a partial 
and temporary return to that alloy, as a gun metal, by powers which 
had rejected it in the first instance as unfit for rifled guns. 
About the middle of this century, and immediately before the intro¬ 
duction of rifling, field ordnance consisted almost universally of bronze,* 
while the first rifled field pieces used in actual warfare were the 
<e Napoleon 33 shell guns, also of bronze, which played so important a 
part in the Italian campaign of 1859, at the battle of Solferino. 
The example of France in thus utilizing her S.B. bronze guns for the 
manufacture of rifled field pieces was sooner or (later followed by all 
the Continental Powers, Prussia excepted ; England however used other 
materials, while the Northern Kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden and 
Norway retained cast iron.t 
For siege rifled guns and guns of position, bronze is largely used on 
the Continent, and in the war of 1870-71 a great proportion of the 
Prussian siege train was composed of such ordnance. 
* Colonel in the Austrian Artillery, Major-General and Director of the Arsenal at 
Vienna. 
f The field smooth-bore ordnance of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, was of cast iron, 
which is the material still used for rifled field guns in these kingdoms; it is of excellent 
quality and very cheap, a 3”.24 gun with 18-pr. projectile costing only £23 4s., but 
of course the charges used are low, so that these pieces are not powerful guns, giving 
an initial velocity of not more than 1200 fs. 
