120 
MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS OF 
it for ordnance. The most suitable material for resisting dynamic strains is 
that which offers the greatest resistance through the greatest space, and not 
that which shows the highest statical cohesion. This is denied in language, 
but admitted in fact, whenever steel is used for guns; for it is only the 
weakest, the least tenacious and elastic, and the softest descriptions of steel, 
which the advocates of the material venture to employ for gun-making. 
Mr. Mallet, in his “ Treatise on Artillery,” makes the following remarks 
on this subject:—“ A gun formed of cast-steel, or of harsh, strong wrought- 
iron, provided it have an enormous surplus of strength above the highest 
strain to which it is to be exposed, will be very safe; but if its proportions 
be reduced within a narrower limit of balancing the final resistance with the 
bursting strain, or if the latter be brought up, accidentally or otherwise, so as 
to approach such balance, the cast-steel or the hard wrought-iron will be 
the most unsafe gun possible, while in all cases the gun of ductile iron will 
be the safest. This might be popularly illustrated by saying that the 
former gun approximates to one of enormous strength, but made of glass, 
while the latter approximates to a gun of sufficient strength, if conceivable, 
of leather, or of india-rubber, or to the silk-wrapped guns of the Chinese. 
. . . . The attempts, therefore, recently made at a great expense to 
fabricate guns of German steel, seem to be a step in the wrong direction, 
and made in ignorance or in defiance of the first principles that should guide 
us.” 1 
Nor is this at all a question of theory. We have ample facts to warrant 
the statement that steel is above all else a treacherous material, and liable 
when it fails, to burst without warning and with explosive violence—points 
of even greater importance than the ultimate resistance of the material. It 
is far better to have a gun which will endure only 509 rounds, and will then 
give ample -warning of its approaching dissolution, than one which will 
endure 5000 rounds, and then explode suddenly, without notice. And 
when, as in the case of the steel guns, this latter quality is aggravated by 
the fact that the material lacks uniformity, and may endure 5000 rounds, or 
may not endure 500—-its only uniformity consisting in the manner and 
suddenness of its disruption—then the unsuitability of the material for 
ordnance becomes great indeed, and the importance of refusing to admit 
Captain von Boppelmairs principle, that from the trial of one steel gun you 
may infer the behaviour of all, becomes sufficiently apparent. 
As to actual examples of the bursting of steel guns, there lies before us a 
list of failures with weapons of that material, which we do not quote in etttenso 
only because we are anxious to avoid the innumerable discussions and explana¬ 
tions and replications to which the publication of that list would inevitably 
give rise. It will be sufficient to state that that list includes guns large and 
small—from 4<-prs. to 9-inch—and by various makers, including Fletcher, 
Morgan, Lynal Thomas, Mushat, Beaulieu, Brown, Yavasseur, and Krupp. 2 
And these examples are culled from an experience of steel guns which is 
small, compared with the experience to which we have appealed as establish¬ 
ing the safety of our wrought-iron guns. 
But other examples of the unreliability of steel are not wanting. Such 
examples are even furnished by the history of our own guns, and notably by 
1 Mallet’s “ Treatise on Artillery,” p; 74; 
2 See also “ Engineer,” October 29, 1870. 
