THE CAUSES OF DRIFT OF ELONGATED PROJECTILES 
FIRED FROM RIFLED GUNS. 
BY 
MAJOR-GENERAL C. H. OWEN, (LATE) R.A. 
(A Lecture delivered at the Royal Artillery Institution, Woolwich, Monday, 3rd February, 1896.) 
CoLoNEL H, BAINBRIDGE, SUPERINTENDENT ROYAL LABORATORY, IN THE CHAIR, 
THE CHAIRMAN—Gentlemen, to those who do not already know him 
let me introduce Major-General Owen, formerly professor of Artillery 
at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. He instructed a great 
many of us in the principles of artillery and initiated us into its 
mysteries of drift, and on this subject he has kindly consented to give 
us a lecture to-night and especially invites discussion. (Applause.) 
MAJOR-GENERAL OWEN—Colonel Bainbridge and Gentlemen, it is a 
great many years since I read a paper on the same subject that I am 
going to bring before you to-night, and the majority of you may rather 
wonder why I want to repeat so much after such a number of years 
and when so much has been done in the meantime. But when I was 
leaving the Royal Military Academy, in 1873, a brother officer who had 
just then come to the Gun Factories, and had some opportunities of 
carrying on practice with proof shot, made an attempt to controvert 
what was supposed to be established at that time; and some experi- 
ments that he made then have been since taken as a proof, that what he 
professed to call the theory of the thing before held was all wrong. 
Well, I do not want to dogmatise, or to make out that my explanation 
is the only true one; at the same time, so far as I know, what I am 
going to say to-night as regards drift was accepted some years ago. It 
has never seriously been challenged by anybody of any authority, nor 
have any experiments been made since my own which would invalidate 
what was done then. Ido not know of course now, having left the 
regiment for some time, what you gentlemen do as regards these kind 
of questions ; whether you care much about them or whether you do 
not ; in fact lam very much flattered at seeing so many here to-night, 
who have come to listen to perhaps a very elementary thing. I do not 
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