Chapter II: Part 2

Sometimes these great projectiles ricochet several times, and go bounding over the water as a pebble skips along the surface of a mill-pond, only there may be the distance of a mile or more between these giant leaps.

The Projectile Travels Faster Than the Sound It Makes.

A strange phenomenon is witnessed by the observer on a towing vessel as he looks, rather uneasily perhaps, toward the distant shore battery, that seems to be firing straight at him. First there is a flash and a puff of smoke; then nothing for a period of seconds, while the projectile is on its way; then suddenly a great splash as the mass of iron strikes the water. Up to this moment there has been no sound of the discharge, no sound of the projectile, since it travels faster than the sound-waves; but now, _after_ it has buried itself in the ocean, is heard its own unmistakable voice, a low, buzzing _um-m-m-m_ approaching from the shore. The projectile itself has arrived _before_ the sound that it makes in transit, and the sound arrives afterward. Last of all is heard the boom of the discharge.

In this beautiful picture the hurling projectile was itself the photographer: that is, in passing out of the gun-barrel, it broke a length of piano-wire stretched across the muzzle and thus automatically closed an electrical circuit that actuated the camera mechanism. And so rapid was the shutter that the great shot hurled forth in the discharge photographed here has not yet had time to issue from the smoke-cone, where it is still hidden.]

Owing to the great velocity of gun projectiles, it is almost impossible for an observer near the target to see them as they approach; but a trained eye can discern the slower moving mortar projectiles as they drop out of the sky, shrieking as they come, curving downward from a height of four or five miles, half a ton falling from a height of four or five miles.

This photograph illustrates another important form of coast defense--the submarine mine. A target about 5 by 5 feet, with a red flag at its apex, is towed across the mine-field, the mines being exploded electrically from a shore station several miles away. The methods of laying and exploding these mines are carefully kept secrets. In this case a charge of five hundred pounds of the newest explosive was used. Fragments of the shattered target and mine-buoy are seen at the right of the picture. Tons of water are hurled into the air by these explosions, and hundreds of fish are killed or stunned.]

It is difficult to realize what an enormous force is released when one of these twelve-inch guns is discharged. The pressure inside of the gun behind the projectile is between thirty-five and forty thousand pounds to the square inch. No engine or machine made by man produces anything like this pressure. The boiler pressure in steam-engines, or in big turbines driven by superheated steam, does not exceed two hundred or three hundred pounds to the square inch. The huge hydraulic presses that would crumple up a steel girder do not exert a pressure of more than one thousand pounds to the square inch. The only reason a gun-barrel can resist this pressure (forty thousand pounds to the square inch) is that it is built up in a series of concentric steel hoops or tubes shrunk one over the other until there is a resistance capacity of from seventy thousand to ninety thousand pounds to the square inch. Even at rest, the barrels of these great guns are under such enormous compression, from being thus squeezed within these outer steel coverings, that, if the retaining steel jackets were suddenly cut, the tubes would blow themselves into pieces from the violent reaction of release.

Not only does this smokeless powder, burning inside these guns, produce enormous pressure, but it generates inconceivably great heat. Water boils at 100° Centigrade; iron melts at 1400°; platinum and the most resistant metals at 2900°; while the hottest thing on earth is the temperature of the electric arc, in which carbon boils. This temperature is between 3000° and 4000° Centigrade, and is believed to be the same as that of these great powder chambers when the gun is fired. Thus a diamond, the hardest substance known, would melt in the barrel of a twelve-inch gun at the moment of discharge. The consequence is that at each discharge of a big gun a thin skin of metal inside the barrel is literally fused, and this leads to rapid erosion of the softened surfaces under the tearing pressure of gases generated. The rifling is worn away; the band over the projectile becomes loose-fitting; and soon the huge gun, that has cost such a great sum, is rendered unfit for service. The life of a twelve-inch gun is only 450 rounds, that is, the gun would be worn out if fired every three minutes for a single day. After that a new life may be given it by boring out the inner tube and putting in a new steel lining.

A Secret for Which Foreign Governments Would Pay Millions.

A few words may be added about the formidable smokeless powder used in these great guns. This powder, in spite of its terrible power, is of innocent appearance, and a small stick of it may be held safely in the hand while it burns with a vivid yellowish flame. There is no danger of its exploding or detonating like gun-cotton, and yet it is made from gun-cotton, treated by a colloiding process that is one of our jealously guarded military secrets. There are foreign governments that would give millions to know exactly how this powder is made and how it is preserved for years without deterioration. The recent destruction of two ships of the French navy was due, it is believed, to deterioration of their smokeless powder.

Why Do Some Eyes In a Picture Seem to Follow Us?

If a person’s picture is taken with the eyes of the person looking directly into the lens or opening of the camera, then the eyes in the picture will always be directly on and appear to follow whoever is looking at it. This is also true of paintings. If a subject being painted is posed so as to look directly at the painter, and the artist paints the picture with the eyes so pointed, then the eyes of the picture will follow you. When you are looking at a picture of a person and the eyes do not follow you, you will know at once that he was not looking at the camera or artist when the picture was being taken or painted.

Where Does a Light Go When It Goes Out?

~WHY YOU CAN BLOW OUT A CANDLE~

To understand the answer to this question fully you will first have to learn what light is, and particularly that it is not the flame from the gas jet or of the lamp or candle that is actually the light, but that light consists of rays or waves in the ether, which is constantly in all space and even in our bodies, coming from the something that is burning. This in the instance above mentioned would be the gas burning as it comes out of the gas jet, the oil in the lamp as it comes up through the wick or the flame of the candle. We are apt to call a lighted gas jet a lamp, or a candle, light, because it is steady. Really, however, there is no such thing as keeping light in a room in an actual sense, for rays of light travel from the substance which produces them faster than anything else we know of in the world. The first thing a light wave does when it is once created is to go some place, and it does this at the rate of 186,000 miles per second. If it cannot penetrate the walls of the room it is either reflected back in the direction from which it came or transformed by the objects which it strikes into some other kind of energy.

When you look at the rays coming from a gas jet, you do not see one ray for more than, say the millionth part of a second, but because these rays of light come so fast one after the other from the burning jet and spread in all directions, they seem to be continuous.

So you see that the rays of light are going away as fast as they are coming from the gas jet. They either go on as light or, as said above, are changed into other forms of energy when they strike things they cannot penetrate in the form of light, or rather one thing, which is heat. A large part of it goes into the air in the room in the form of heat, as you well know, now that it is called to your attention. Some of it goes into the furniture and some of it is changed into another form of heat, which, combining with the chemicals in other things it mixes with, changes their appearance and usefulness. As, for instance, the carpets and hangings in the room, the colors of which become faded when exposed to light rays too much. The heat from the light rays is responsible for the fading of colors in our garments as well.

When you “put out the light,” as we say, or turn off the gas, you cut off the source of light. Really, then, our expression that “the light goes out” is only true while the gas is lighted, for from the flaming gas jet the light is going out all the time, whereas when the gas is turned off no light is being produced, and when you turn off the gas you do not turn out the light, but only that which makes light.

Why Does a Fire Go Out?

Fire will go out naturally when there is nothing left to burn, or it will go out if it cannot secure enough oxygen out of the air to keep it going. In the first case it dies what we might call a “natural death,” and in the latter case the fire practically suffocates. The fire in the open fireplace, if it has plenty of air, will burn up everything burnable that it can reach. The stones of the fireplace or other parts of a stove will not burn, because they have already been burned, and you cannot burn anything a second time, if all of the oxygen in it was burned out of it the first time.

Now, then, to burn up a thing, you must first start a fire under it, and then keep a constant draft of air playing on it from beneath, or the fire will die out. The more difficult a thing is to burn, the more important it is that you have plenty of draft. If the ashes accumulate under the fire the air cannot go through them in sufficient quantity and the fire will go out. Other things which prevent the current of air from going up through the fire will cause it to go out. That is why we close the lower door of the furnace, to keep the fire from burning out. When we shut off the draft of air from below, the fire in the furnace burns slowly, i. e., it just hangs on, so to speak.

Why Does a Lamp Give a Better Light With the Chimney On?

When a lamp is burning without a chimney it generally smokes. That is because the oil which is coming up through the wick is being only partially burned. The carbon, which is about one-half of what the oil contains, is not being burned at all, and goes off into the air in little black specks with the gases which are thrown off. The reason the carbon is not burned when the chimney is off is that there is not sufficient oxygen from the air combining with it, as it is separated from the oil in the partial combustion that is going on. To make the carbon in the oil burn you must mix it with plenty of oxygen at a certain temperature, and this can only be done by forcing sufficient oxygen through the flame to bring the heat of the flame to the point where the carbon will combine with it and burn. When you put the chimney on the lamp you create a draft which forces more oxygen through the flame, brings the heat up to the proper temperature and enables the carbon to combine with it and burn. When you take the chimney off again the heat goes down, when the draft is shut off and the lamp smokes again.

The chimney also protects the flame of the lamp from drafts from the sides and above, and helps to make a brighter light, because a steady light is brighter than a flickering one.

The draft created by the chimney also forces the gases produced by the burning oil up and away from the flame. Some of these gases have a tendency to put out a light or a fire.

Does Light Weigh Anything?

To get at the answer to this question we must go back to the definition of light. Light is a wave in the ether and contains no particles of matter. It, therefore, does not weigh anything at all.

When men had studied light thoroughly, however, they came to the conclusion that it must have the power of pressure, which, from the standpoint of results, would amount to the same thing as having weight. They reasoned that if you had a perfect balance and let sunlight shine down on one of the sides of the balance, that side should go down under the pressure of light. In their first experiments along this line men failed to show that under such conditions the side of the balance on which the light shone did go down, but by continuous experiments it was proved finally that the light did exert a sufficient pressure to cause the scales to go down, and in effect this is the same as having weight; but this has been found to be a common property of rays of various kinds, including heat, and we, therefore, do not speak of this quality as weight, but as the power of radiating pressure.

Why Does a Stick Seem to Bend When Put in Water?

When light passes from one medium to another, as for example from glass or water to air, or from air or glass to water, the rays of light change their course, thus making them seem to be bent or broken. The rays of light from the part of the stick in the water take a different direction from the rays from the part which is out of the water, giving the appearance of breaking or bending at the place where the air and water meet. It is, of course, the light rays which are bent and not the object itself.

This bending or changing of the path of light rays is called refraction. If you place a coin in a glass of water so that it may be viewed obliquely, you can apparently see two coins, a small one through the surface of the water and another apparently magnified through the side of the glass.

This is due only to the absolute principle that rays of light change their direction in passing from one thing to another, and on this principle of the rays of light our optical instruments, including the microscope, the telescope, the camera and eyeglasses are based.

What Makes the Stars Twinkle?

I might tell you, just to show how clever I am, that stars do not twinkle at all, and leave you with that for an answer. But since they really do seem to twinkle, and that is what causes your question, I will tell you. As we have already learned in our talks about the stars and the sky in general, the stars are suns which are constantly throwing off light, just as our sun gives us light, and when this light strikes the air which surrounds the earth it meets many objects--little particles of dust and other things always floating about in it. The light comes to us in the form of rays from the stars and some of these rays strike particles of various kinds in the air and are thus interfered with. If you are looking at a lighted window some distance away and there are a lot of boys and girls or men and women running past the window, one after the other, rapidly, it will make the light in the window appear to twinkle. The twinkling is due to the interference which the rays of light encounter while traveling toward the eye.

Why Does an Onion Make the Tears Come?

That is nature’s way of protecting the eyes from the smarting which the onion would cause in your eyes if the tears did not come quickly and overcome the bad effect so produced. Tears are provided for washing the ball of your eyes. Every time you wink a little tear is released from under the eyelid, and the wink spreads it all over the eyeball. This washes down the front of the eyeball and cleanses it of all dust and other things that fly at the eye from the air. Then the tear runs along a little channel, much like a trough, at the lower part of the eye, and out through a little hole in the eye, and in this case the tear is really only an eye-wash. Many things, but more often sadness or injured feelings, start the tears coming so fast from under the eyelid that the little trough at the bottom and the hole in the corner of the eye are too small to hold them or carry them off, so they roll over the edge of the lower eyelid and down the face. These are what we call tears. Among other things that will cause tear-glands to cause an over-supply of eye-wash to come down, are onions. What they give off is very trying to the eyes, and so, just as soon as the something which an onion throws off hits the eyeball, the nerves of the eye telegraph the brain to turn on the tears quickly, and they come in a little deluge and counteract the bad effect of the onion.

The First Missile

~HOW MAN LEARNED TO SHOOT~

A naked savage found himself in the greatest danger. A wild beast, hungry and fierce was about to attack him. Escape was impossible. Retreat was cut off. He must fight for his life--but how?

Should he bite, scratch or kick? Should he strike with his fist? These were the natural defences of his body, but what were they against the teeth, the claws and the tremendous muscles of his enemy? Should he wrench a dead branch from a tree and use it for a club? That would bring him within striking distance to be torn to pieces before he could deal a second blow.

There was but a moment in which to act. Swiftly he seized a jagged fragment of rock from the ground and hurled it with all his force at the blazing eyes before him; then another, and another, until the beast, dazed and bleeding from the unexpected blows, fell back and gave him a chance to escape. He knew that he had saved his life, but there was something else which his dull brain failed to realize.

He had invented arms and ammunition!

In other words, he had needed to strike a harder blow than the blow of his fist, at a greater distance than the length of his arm, and his brain showed him how to do it. After all, what is a modern rifle but a device which man has made with his brain permitting him to strike an enormously hard blow at a wonderful distance? Firearms are really but a more perfect form of stone-throwing, and this early Cave Man took the first step that has led down the ages.

This strange story of a development has been taking place slowly through thousands and thousands of years, so that today you are able to take a swift shot at distant game instead of merely throwing stones.

PRACTICE DEVELOPED SOME WONDERFUL MARKSMEN AMONG THE USERS OF THIS PRIMITIVE WEAPON]

We do not know the name of the man who invented the sling. Possibly he did not even have a name, but in some way he hit upon a scheme for throwing stones farther, harder, and straighter than any of his ancestors.

The men and women in the Cave Colony suddenly found that one bright-eyed young fellow, with a little straighter forehead than the others, was beating them all at hunting. During weeks he had been going away mysteriously, for hours each day. Now, whenever he left the camp he was sure to bring home game, while the other men would straggle back for the most part empty-handed.

Was it witchcraft? They decided to investigate.

Accordingly, one morning several of them followed at a careful distance as he sought the shore of a stream where water-fowl might be found. Parting the leaves, they saw him pick up a pebble from the bank and then to their surprise, take off his girdle of skin and place the stone in its center, holding both ends with his right hand.

Stranger still, he whirled the girdle twice around his head, then released one end so that the leather strip flew out and the stone shot straight at a bird in the water.

The mystery was solved. They had seen the first slingman in action.

The new plan worked with great success, and a little practice made expert marksmen. We know that most of the early races used it for hunting and in war. We find it shown in pictures made many thousands of years ago in ancient Egypt and Assyria. We find it in the Roman Army where the slingman was called a “funditor.”

Surely, too, you remember the story of David and Goliath when the young shepherd “prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone.”

Yet slings had their drawbacks. A stone slung might kill a bird or even a man, but it was not very effective against big game.

What was wanted was a missile to pierce a thick hide.

Man had begun to make spears for use in a pinch, but would you like to tackle a husky bear or a well-horned stag with only a spear for a weapon?

No more did our undressed ancestors. The invention of the greatly desired arm probably came about in a most curious way.

Long ages ago man had learned to make fire by patiently rubbing two sticks together, or by twirling a round one between his hands with its point resting upon a flat piece of wood.

ONE OF ROBIN HOOD’S FAMOUS BAND ENCOUNTERS A SAVAGE TUSKER AT CLOSE RANGE]

In this way it could be made to smoke, and finally set fire to a tuft of dried moss, from which he might get a flame for cooking. This was such hard work that he bethought him to twist a string of sinew about the upright spindle and cause it to twirl by pulling alternately at the two string ends, as some savage races still do. From this it was a simple step to fasten the ends of the two strings to a bent piece of wood, another great advantage since now but one hand was needed to twirl the spindle, and the other could hold it in place. This was the “bow-drill” which also is used to this day.

But bent wood is apt to be springy. Suppose that while one were bearing on pretty hard with a well-tightened string, in order to bring fire quickly, the point of the spindle should slip from its block. Naturally, it would fly away with some force if the position were just right.

THIS COMPACT ARM WITH ITS SMALL BOLT AND GREAT POWER WAS POPULAR WITH MANY SPORTSMEN]

There was one man who stopped short when he lost his spindle, for a red-hot idea shot suddenly through his brain.

Once or twice he chuckled to himself softly. Thereupon he arose and began to experiment. He chose a longer, springier piece of wood, bent it into a bow, and strung it with a longer thong. He placed the end of a straight stick against the thong, drew it strongly back, and released it.

The shaft whizzed away with force enough to delight him, and lo, there was the first Bow-and-Arrow!

Armed with his bow-and-arrow, man now was lord of creation. No longer was it necessary for him to huddle with his fellows in some cave to avoid being eaten by prowling beasts. Instead he went where he would and boldly hunted the fiercest of them. In other words, his brain was beginning to tell, for though his body was still no match for the lion and the bear, he had thought out a way to conquer them.

Also he was better fed with a greater variety of game. And now, free to come and go wherever he might find it, he was able to spread into various lands and so to organize the tribes and nations which at last gave us civilization and history.

A new weapon now came about through warfare. Man has been a savage fighting animal through pretty much all his history, but while he tried to kill the other fellow, he objected to being killed himself.

Therefore he took to wearing armor. During the Middle Ages he piled on more and more, until at last one of the knights could hardly walk, and it took a strong horse to carry him. When such a one fell, he went over with a crash like a tin-peddler’s wagon, and had to be picked up again by some of his men. Such armor would turn most of the arrows. Hence invention got at work again and produced the Crossbow and its bolt. We have already learned how the tough skin of animals brought about the bow; now we see that man’s artificial iron skin caused the invention of the crossbow.

What was the Crossbow? It was the first real hand-shooting machine. It was another big step toward the day of the rifle. The idea was simple enough. Wooden bows had already been made as strong as the strongest man could pull, and they wished for still stronger ones--steel ones. How could they pull them? At first they mounted them upon a wooden frame and rested one end on the shoulder for a brace. Then they took to pressing the other end against the ground, and using both hands. Next, it was a bright idea to put a stirrup on this end, in order to hold it with the foot.

Still they were not satisfied. “Stronger, stronger!” they clamored; “give us bows which will kill the enemy farther away than he can shoot at us! If we cannot set such bows with both arms let us try our backs!” So they fastened “belt-claws” to their stout girdles and tugged the bow strings into place with their back and leg muscles.

Who First Discovered the Power of Gunpowder?

Probably the Chinese, although all authorities do not agree. Strange, is it not, that a race still using crossbows in its army should have known of explosives long before the Christian Era, and perhaps as far back as the time of Moses? Here is a passage from their ancient Gentoo Code of Laws: “The magistrate shall not make war with any deceitful machine, or with poisoned weapons, or with cannons or guns, or any kind of firearms.” But China might as well have been Mars before the age of travel. Our civilization had to work out the problem for itself.

It all began through playing with fire. It was desired to throw fire on an enemy’s buildings, or his ships, and so destroy them.

Burning torches were thrown by machines, made of cords and springs, over a city wall, and it became a great study to find the best burning compound with which to cover these torches. One was needed which would blaze with a great flame and was hard to put out.

Hence the early chemists made all possible mixtures of pitch, resin, naphtha, sulphur, saltpeter, etc.; “Greek fire” was one of the most famous.

Many of these were made in the monasteries. The monks were pretty much the only people in those days with time for study, and two of these shaven-headed scientists now had a chance to enter history. Roger Bacon was the first. One night he was working his diabolical mixture in the stone-walled laboratory, and watched, by the flickering lights, the progress of a certain interesting combination for which he had used pure instead of impure saltpeter.

Suddenly there was an explosion, shattering the chemical apparatus and probably alarming the whole building. That explosion proved the new combination was not fitted for use as a thrown fire; it also showed the existence of terrible forces far beyond the power of all bow-springs, even those made of steel.

Roger Bacon thus discovered what was practically gunpowder, as far back as the thirteenth century, and left writings in which he recorded mixing 11.2 parts of the saltpeter, 29.4 of charcoal, and 29 of sulphur. This was the formula developed as the result of his investigations.

Berthold Schwartz, a monk of Freiburg, studied Bacon’s works and carried on dangerous experiments of his own, so that he is ranked with Bacon for the honor. He was also the first one to rouse the interest of Europe in the great discovery.

~THE FIRST REAL FIRE ARMS~

And then began the first crude, clumsy efforts at gunmaking. Firearms were born.

Hand bombards and culverins were among the early types. Some of these were so heavy that a forked support had to be driven into the ground, and two men were needed, one to hold and aim, the other to prime and fire.

Improvements kept coming, however. Guns were lightened and bettered in shape. Somebody thought of putting a flash pan, for the powder, by the side of the touch-hole, and now it was decided to fasten the slow-match in a movable cock upon the barrel, and ignite it with a trigger. These matches were fuses of some slow-burning fiber, like tow, which would keep a spark for a considerable time. Formerly they had to be carried separately, but the new arrangement was a great convenience and made the match-lock. The cock, being curved like a snake, was called the “serpentine.”

About the time sportsmen were through wondering at the convenience of the match-lock, they began to realize its inconvenience. They found that they burned up a great deal of fuse, and were hard to keep lighted. Both statements were true, so inventors racked their brains again for something better. They all knew you could bring sparks with flint and steel, and that seemed an idea worth working on. A Nuremberg inventor, in 1515, hit on the wheel-lock. In this a notched steel wheel was wound up with a key like a clock. Flint or pyrite was held against the jagged edge of the wheel by the pressure of the serpentine. You pulled the trigger, then “whirr,” the wheel revolved, a stream of sparks flew off into the flash-pan, and the gun was discharged.

This gun worked beautifully, but it was expensive. Wealthy sportsmen could afford them, and so for the first time firearms began to be used for hunting. Some of these sixteenth and seventeenth century nabobs had such guns of beautiful workmanship, so wrought and carved and inlaid, that they must have cost a small fortune. You will find them in many large museums to this day.

But now the robbers had their turn. There are two stories of the invention of the flint-lock. Both deal with robbers, both have good authority, and both may be true, for inventions sometimes are made independently in different places.

One story runs that the flint-lock which was often styled “Lock à la Miquelet,” from the Spanish word, “Miquelitos”--marauders--told its origin in its name. The other is, that the flint-lock was invented in Holland by gangs of thieves, whose principal business was to steal poultry.

In either case the explanation is easy. The match-lock showed its fire at night and wouldn’t do for thieves, the wheel-lock was too expensive, so again necessity became the mother of a far-reaching invention.

Everybody knows what the flint-lock was like. You simply fastened a flake of flint in the cock and snapped it against a steel plate. This struck off sparks which fell into the flash-pan and fired the charge.

It was so practical that it became the form of gun for all uses; thus gunmaking began to be a big industry. Invented early in the seventeenth century, it was used by the hunters and soldiers of the next two hundred years. Old people remember when flint-locks were plentiful everywhere. In fact, they are still being manufactured and are sold in some parts of Africa and the Orient. One factory in Birmingham, England, is said to produce about twelve hundred weekly, and Belgium shares in their manufacture. Some of the Arabs use them to this day in the form of strange-looking guns with long, slender muzzles and very light, curved stocks.

There were freak inventors in the flint-lock period just as there are to-day. Some of them wrestled with the problem of repeating guns, and put together a number of barrels, even seven in the case of one carbine. Others tried revolving chambers, like our revolvers, and still others, magazine stocks. Pistols came into use in many interesting shapes, but these were too practical to be considered freaks.

~WHY WE CALL THEM PISTOLS~

Pistols, by the way, are named from the town of Pistola, Italy, where they are said to have been invented and first used.

We must not forget that rifling was invented about the time that the wheel-lock appeared, and had a great deal to do with the improvement of shooting. Austrians claim its invention for Casper Zollner, of Vienna, who cut straight grooves in the barrel’s bore. His gun is said to have been used for the first time in 1498, but the Italians seem to have still better warrant as these significant words appear in old Latin Italian, under date of July 28th, 1476, in the inventory of the fortress of Guastalla: “Also one iron gun made with a twist like a snail shell.” The rifling made the bullet spin like a top as it flew through the air, thus greatly improving its precision.

In the year 1807 the Rev. Alexander John Forsythe, LL.D., got his patent papers for something far better than even the steady old flint. He had invented the percussion system. In some form this has been used ever since. Which is to say that when the hammer of your gun falls, it doesn’t explode the powder, although it seems to. Instead it sets off a tiny portion of a very sensitive chemical compound called the “primer,” and the explosion of this “primer” makes the powder go off. Of course, the two explosions come so swiftly that your ear hears only a single bang.

Primers were tried in different forms called “detonators,” but the familiar little copper cap was the most popular. No need to describe them. Millions are still made to be used on old-fashioned nipple guns, even in this day of fixed ammunition.

But now we come to another great development, the Breech-loader.

THE MODERN SPORTSMAN WITH HIS AUTOMATIC RIFLE IS PREPARED FOR ALL EMERGENCIES]

Perhaps you have had to handle an old muzzle-loader. It was all right so long as you knew of nothing better, but think of it now that you have your beautiful breech-loader. Do you remember how sometimes you overloaded, and the kick made your shoulder lame for a week? Or how, when you were excited you shot away your ramrod? The gun fouled too, and was hard to clean, the nipples broke off, the caps split, and the breeches rusted so that you had to take them to a gunsmith. Yes, in spite of the game it got, it was a lot of trouble, now you come to think of it. How different it all is now!

Breech-loaders were hardly new. King Henry VIII of England, he of the many wives, had a match-lock arquebus of this type dated 1537. Henry IV of France even invented one for his army, and others worked a little on the idea from time to time. But it wasn’t until fixed ammunition came into use that the breech-loader really came to stay--and that was only the other day. You remember that the Civil War began with muzzle-loaders and ended with breech-loaders.

Houiller, the French gunsmith, hit on the great idea of the cartridge. If you were going to use powder, ball and percussion primer to get your game, why not put them all into a neat, handy, gas-tight case?

THE FIRST AMERICAN MADE GUNS

~HOW THE FIRST AMERICAN GUN WAS MADE~

Two men, a smith and his son, both named Eliphalet Remington, in 1816, were working busily one day at their forge in beautiful Ilion Gorge, when, so tradition says, the son asked his father for money to buy a rifle, and met with a refusal. The request was natural for the surrounding hills were full of game. The father must have had his own reasons for refusing, but it started the manufacture of guns in America.

Eliphalet, Jr., closed his firm jaws tightly, and began collecting scrap iron on his own account. This he welded skillfully into a gun-barrel, walked fifteen miles to Utica to have it rifled, and finally had a weapon of which he might well be proud.

In reality, it was such a very good gun that soon the neighbors ordered others like it, and before long the Remington forge found itself hard at work to meet the increasing demand. Several times each week the stalwart young manufacturer packed a load of gun-barrels upon his back, and tramped all the way to Utica where a gunsmith rifled and finished them. At this time there were no real gun-factories in America, although gunsmiths were located in most of the larger towns. All gun-barrels were imported from England or Europe.

A VISIT TO A CARTRIDGE FACTORY

~HOW AMMUNITION IS MADE~

One of the first shocks you get when you start your visit through a cartridge factory is the matter-of-fact way in which the operatives, girls in many cases, handle the most terrible compounds. We stop, for example, where they are making primers to go in the head of your loaded shell, in order that it may not miss fire when the bunch of quail whirrs suddenly into the air from the sheltering grasses. That grayish pasty mass is wet fulminate of mercury. Suppose it should dry a trifle too rapidly. It would be the last thing you ever did suppose, for there is force enough in that double handful to blow its surroundings into fragments. You edge away a little, and no wonder, but the girl who handles it shows no fear as she deftly but carefully presses it into moulds which separate it into the proper sizes for primers. She knows that in its present moist condition it cannot explode.

Or, perhaps, we may be watching one of the many loading machines. There is a certain suggestiveness in the way the machines are separated by partitions. The man in charge takes a small carrier of powder from a case in the outside wall and shuts the door, then carefully empties it into the reservoir of his machine, and watches alertly while it packs the proper portions into the waiting shells. He looks like a careful man, and needs to be. You do not stand too close.

The empty carrier then passes through a little door at the side of the building, and drops into the yawning mouth of an automatic tube. In the twinkling of an eye it appears in front of the operator in one of the distributing stations, where it is refilled, and returned to its proper loading machine, in order to keep the machine going at a perfectly uniform rate; while at the same time it allows but a minimum amount of powder to remain in the building at any moment. Each machine has but just sufficient powder in its hopper to run until a new supply can reach it. Greater precaution than this cannot be imagined, illustrating as it does that no effort has been spared to protect the lives of the operators.

It is remarkable that, in an output of something like four million per day, every cartridge is perfect.

Such things are not accidental. The secret is, inspection.

~TESTING MATERIALS AND PRODUCTS~

Let us see what that means. It means laboratory tests to start with. Here are brought many samples of the body paper, wad paper, metals, waterproofing mixture, fulminate of mercury, sulphur, chlorate of potash, antimony sulphide, powder, wax, and other ingredients, and even the operating materials such as coal, grease, oil, and soaps. In the laboratory we see expert chemists and metallurgists with their test-tubes, scales, Bunsen burners, retorts, tensile machines, microscopes, and other scientific looking apparatus, busily hunting for defects.

For example, one marker is examining a supply of cupro-nickel, such as is used in jacketing certain bullets. A corner of each strip is first bent over at right angles, then back in the other direction until it is doubled, then straightened. It does not show the slightest sign of breaking or cracking, in spite of the severe treatment, therefore it is perfect. Let but the least flaw appear, and the shipment is rejected.

SHOT TOWER--TALLEST BUILDING IN CONNECTICUT]

LARGEST CARTRIDGE EQUALS MORE
THAN 1,000,000 OF SMALLEST
(HELD ON HAND)]

Two large iron cylinders descend in the center, coming down through the ceiling from above; we are invited to look through an open port in one of these.

We see nothing but the whitened opposite wall, against which a light burns.

It appears absolutely empty, though within it is raining such a swift shower of invisible metal that if we were to stretch our hands into the apparently vacant space they would be torn from our arms.

A large water tank below is churned into foam with the impact of the falling shot, and as we look downward we make out finally the haze of motion. It is so interesting that we take the elevator and rise ten stories to the source of the shower.

Here high in the air are the large caldrons where many pigs of lead, with the proper alloy, are melted into a sort of metallic soup. This is fed into small compartments containing sieves or screens, through the meshes of which the shining drops appear and then plunge swiftly downward.

But this only begins the process. Taken from the water tanks and hoisted up again, the shot pellets, in a second journey down, through complicated devices, are sorted, tumbled, polished, graded, coated with graphite, and finally stored.

The pictures shown in this story were prepared especially to
illustrate this story of “How Man Learned to Shoot” by the
Searchlight Library for the Remington Arms Company.

Photo by Bethlehem Steel Co.

This photograph shows gun ingots after being “stripped” and “cored.”]

Photo by Bethlehem Steel Co.

This photograph shows a gun ingot in the process of being forged under forging press.]

Photo by Bethlehem Steel Co.

This photograph shows a gun being fired at the Proving Grounds for test.]

The Parts of a Big Gun

~THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT A BIG GUN~

Before going into a description of the manufacture of a big gun it would be well to understand the following definitions:

The “breech” of a gun is its rear-end, or that end into which the projectile and powder charge are loaded.

The “muzzle” of a gun is its forward end.

By “calibre” is meant the inside diameter of the gun in inches. A 5-inch gun is one of “minor calibre,” and one of 14-inches a gun of “major calibre.”

The length of a gun is never expressed in inches or feet, but in the _number of times_ that its calibre is divisible into its length; thus, when we say a 12-inch 50-calibre gun, we mean a gun of 12 inches in diameter, and 12 times 50, or 600 inches long.

The “bore” is the hole extending through the center of the gun, from the rear face of the liner to its forward end.

The “powder chamber” is the rear part of the bore, and extends from the face of the breech plug when closed to the point where the “rifling” begins. The powder chamber is slightly larger in diameter than the rest of the bore.

The “rifling” is the name given to the spiral grooves which are cut into the surface of the bore of the gun, and give to the projectile its rotary motion when the gun is fired.

With the advent of “iron-clads” and heavily armored fortresses, it became necessary to increase the power of the guns in use, until to-day a 14-inch gun of 45 calibres fires a projectile weighing 1400 pounds, with an initial velocity of 2600 feet per second. An idea of this initial velocity may be better obtained by comparison when you realize that a train going sixty miles an hour is only traveling at the rate of 88 feet per second. Now, in order to produce such wonderful power in a gun, great pressure must be generated in the bore, and it was soon found that a one-piece gun, whether cast or forged, could not withstand such pressures.

To begin with, we may consider this one-piece gun, or any gun, as a tube which must withstand a great pressure from within, so that when a gun is designed care must be taken to see that the material from which it is constructed is strong enough to withstand this pressure. And not only must the gun be sufficiently strong, but it must not be too heavy, so that you see you cannot go on forever increasing the thickness of the walls of this tube. Besides, it is generally acknowledged that a simple tube or cylinder cannot be made with walls of sufficient thickness to withstand from within a _continued_ pressure per square inch greater than the tenacity of a square-inch bar of the same material; in other words, if the tensile strength of a metal is only twelve tons per square inch, no gun of that metal, however thick its walls, could withstand a pressure of twenty tons per square inch, and the modern big guns are tested at that great a pressure. And if we look further into this matter of pressures we find that when a gun is fired the pressure exerts itself in two ways; it tends to burst the gun longitudinally or down the middle, and it tends to pull the gun apart in the direction of its length. Of course, some method of strengthening this one-piece gun was sought after, with the result that to-day guns are either “_built-up_” or “_wire-wound_.”

A “built-up” gun is one made of several layers, each layer being separately constructed and then assembled together. The order of assemblage differs somewhat with the different calibres, but the method of assemblage is essentially the same, that is, the outside layers are heated and shrunk on the inner ones. This question will be treated at greater length later on.

A “wire-wound” gun is one in which the necessary additional strength is obtained by winding wire around an inner tube of steel, each layer being wound with a different tension of the wire; this type of gun has found great favor with foreign manufacturers. In this country, however, the “built-up” system is used almost exclusively, and so this description will deal with the manufacture of a “built-up” gun.

Sketch Showing Construction of a Modern “Built-up” Gun.

_A_, HOOP; _B_, HOOP; _C_, JACKET; _D_, TUBE; _E_, LINER; _F_, HOOP.]

A modern “built-up” gun is composed of a _liner_, a _tube_, a _jacket_ and _hoops_.

The _liner_ is in one piece and extends the entire length of the bore and carries the “rifling” and the powder chamber.

The _tube_ is in one piece and envelops the liner for its entire length. Formerly the _tube_ carried the “rifling” and powder chamber, but due to the wearing out of the “rifling” with constant firing, a liner was decided on, so that now when the “rifling” becomes worn, the liner can be removed and a new one substituted.

The _jacket_ is usually in two pieces and is shrunk on the tube; it extends the entire length, and its rear end is threaded in the inside for the attachment of the “breech bushing.”

_Hoops_ are shrunk on over the jacket and in a big gun are sometimes as many as six or seven in number.

The liner, tube, jacket and hoops are made of the finest quality of open hearth steel, and the steel must conform to specifications set by the government.

Photo by Bethlehem Steel Co.

This photograph shows a mould for a gun ingot under hydraulic press for fluid compression.]

The chemical composition having been determined, the necessary elements are weighed out and the whole charged into an open hearth furnace. When the furnace is ready to be tapped the molten metal is run into a large ladle, which in turn is taken by a crane to the casting pit, where the mould is filled. The ingots for the large calibre guns run from 42-inch to 48-inch in diameter, and after being poured they are immediately run under a hydraulic press, where they are subjected to a pressure of about six tons per square inch to drive out the gases, and then lowered to about 1500 pounds pressure per square inch for a certain length of time during the cooling. This pressure tends to make the ingot solid, by expelling the gases, which would cause blow-holes, and by preventing “piping” and “segregation.” When a metal cools, the top and sides cool first, and this outer layer shrinks and pulls away from the centre, with the result that a cavity or “pipe” would be formed, but the hydraulic pressure forces fluid metal into this cavity and so prevents the “pipe.” The cooling also causes the various elements to solidify separately, and they tend to break away from the mass and collect at the centre; this is called “segregation,” and is also partially prevented by fluid compression. A solid ingot, however, is obtained, and this is absolutely necessary.

After the ingot has cooled sufficiently it is “_stripped_,” that is, it is removed from the mould, and then it is sent to the shop to have the “discard,” or extra length, cut off. When the ingot is cast, an extra amount of metal is poured into the mould to permit this discard, the theory being that the poorer metal, together with gases and other impurities, rise to the top. The government specifications require that there shall be a 20% discard from the upper end and a 3% discard from the lower end. The discard having been cut off, the ingot is “cored,” that is, its centre is bored out, the diameter of the hole depending on the size of the ingot.

Photo by Bethlehem Steel Co.

This photograph shows gun ingot in boring mill being cored.]

The ingot is now ready for the “forge,” and on its receipt in the forge shop it is placed in a furnace to be heated; and here great care must be exercised to prevent setting up any additional strains in the ingot. When the ingot was cooling just after casting the metal tended to flow from the centre; the interior is still in a condition of strain, and if the cold ingot is now placed in a hot furnace, cracks are apt to form in the centre, causing the forging to later break in service.

However, the ingot having been properly heated, it is ready for either the forging hammer or the press. The present-day practice, though, is to forge the ingot under a press forge, as the working of the metal causes a certain flow, and as a certain amount of time is necessary for this flow, the continued pressure and slow motion of the press allows the molecules of the metal to adjust themselves more easily, and a better and more homogeneous forged ingot is produced than if the forging had been done with a hammer.

When forging a hollow ingot, a mandrel, merely a cylindrical steel shaft, is placed through the hole in the ingot and the ingot forged on the mandrel, thereby not only is the outside diameter of the ingot decreased, but the length of the ingot is increased. The usual practice is to continue the forging until the original thickness of the walls of the ingot is decreased one-half and until the ingot is within two inches of the required finished diameters. The ingot is now known as a “forging,” and the lower end of each ingot as cast will be the breech end of the forging that is made from it.