Identifier: triumphswonderso01boyd (find matches)
Title: Triumphs and wonders of the 19th century, the true mirror of a phenomenal era, a volume of original, entertaining and instructive historic and descriptive writings, showing the many and marvellous achievements which distinguish an hundred years of material, intellectual, social and moral progress ..
Year: 1899 (1890s)
Authors: Boyd, James Penny, 1836-1910
Subjects: Progress Inventions
Publisher: Philadelphia, Pa., A. J. Holman & Co
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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he requested, on his death-bed, thatthe salute over his grave should be fired with nothing but smooth-bore guns.It must be confessed, however, that the 12-pound smooth-bore Napoleon gunlong held its own against the new rifled field-pieces, as many a bloody battlein our Civil War well attested. In the manufacture of heavy guns the United States for some time ledthe world. In 1860, General Eodman, of the Ordnance Department, pro-duced the first 15-inch gun ever made. This gun was made of cast-iron,and was cast on a hollow core, cooled by a stream of water passing throughit, by which means the metal nearest the bore was made the hardest andmost dense, and the tendency towards bursting was thus reduced to a mini-mum. General Rodman was also the inventor of the hollow cake powder,which consisted of cakes perforated with numerous small holes for thepassage of the flame, thus enabling the powder to be progressively con-sumed, and causing the amount of gas at the last moments of the discharge
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GENERAL WINFIELD SCOTT. THE CENTURYS ARMIES AND ARMS 289 to be greater than at the instant of ignition. A large-grain powder, knownas mammoth powder, was afterwards devised by him to produce the sameresults. It will be seen later that this invention has rendered possiblethe powerful ordnance of the present day; and it is perhaps not too muchto say, that Rodman is really thus the father of the modern high-powerguns. At the beginning of the War of Secession the heaviest gun in the UnitedStates was the 15-inch Rodman, the projectile of which weighed 320 lbs., thecharge of powder weighing 35 lbs. Next to this was the 10-inch Columbiad,which fired a 100-lb. shell with a charge of 18 lbs. of powder. The effectiverange of these guns was a little less than three miles. The heaviest mortarwas of 13-inch caliber, fired a 200-lb. shell, with a charge of 20 lbs. of pow-der, and had a range of 4325 yards. This mortar was, like all others then

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