Cannonball

“ Permission having been granted, "Gentlemen," said he with an inspired accent, "our president is right in placing the question of the projectile above all others. The ball we are about to discharge at the moon is our ambassador to her, and I wish to consider it from a moral point of view. The cannon-ball, gentlemen, to my mind, is the most magnificent manifestation of human power. If Providence has created the stars and the planets, man has called the cannon-ball into existence. ”

“ When its rate of movement is not much faster than that at which a man can walk, and when to all appearance it might be stopped by the pressure of the foot as readily as a cricket-ball, it yet possesses the power of inflicting serious injury on such an attempt being put into execution. This power is easily understood if the amount of force is remembered which must still be inherent in the cannon-ball for it to overcome the inertia of its own mass, and the resistance to which it is exposed in passing over the ground on which it is rolling. ”

“ It is well known, that cannon balls and shot out of common barrels are impelled in a line formed by the centre of the ball, and a compound of the projectile force of the explosion acted upon by the air and by gravitation in its course; the ball has a tendency to rise upward to a certain extent after leaving the muzzle of the gun; its particular motion is as if the ball had a transverse axis, and rolled forward in that axis, in the manner that the wheels of a carriage roll ”

“ In the excitement of the moment the poker was left in the cannon!
A heap of soil at the end of the garden was chosen as the "earthwork," on which our big gun was fixed, pointing upward, though unnoticed by us, point-blank at the parlor windows. A small heap of shavings was put around the weapon, and one was appointed to light it. "To cover!" at once was the order, and each one rushed to a safe place. I tremble at this moment when I remember that, a second before the explosion, the inevitable small boy rushed from one cover to another right in front of the cannon's mouth. ”

“ All strokes at billiards are distinguished by the name of cannons or hazards. Cannon is a contraction of carambole, and is a stroke in which the player strikes both balls in succession with his own. The [599] “losing hazard” is when the player’s own ball is forced into either of the six pockets, after contact with the other ball. The “winning hazard” is made by forcing the ball played upon into either pocket after contact.
Fig. 5.—Cannons.
Here are a few examples of cannons made from the cushion, without the use of the side-stroke. They only indicate the infinite variety that can be made. ”

“ The player who makes the greatest number of points in each round wins the game, and takes the lead in the next. The rule as to balls rebounding beyond the baulk line, or being forced off the table, is the same as in the preceding game,
The Cannon Game, sometimes played on a table without holes, consists entirely of cannons, that is to say, two balls struck in succession by the cue-ball This game is played 50, 100, or 150 up, and the holes into which the balls fall are sometimes counted in addition to the cannon. Three balls only are used a white, a spot-white, and a black ball. ”

“ According to a former story a gun was to be employed to throw the projectile from the earth to the moon; now the gun was to be employed to change the earth's axis. The cannon, always the cannon; these gunners of the Gun Club had nothing else in their heads but the cannon. They had a real craze for the cannon. Was this brutal engine again threatening the universe? Yes, we are sorry to confess it, it was a cannon which was uppermost in the mind of President Barbicane and his associates. After the Columbiad of Florida, they had gone on to the monster cannon of the place "x." ”

“ Then poising the ball for a little in his hand, and viewing it with an air of contempt, “There!” said he, tossing it carelessly from him into the air, “he that likes may gang and fetch it back.”
The ball, as if shot from the mouth of a cannon, flew on in a straight line completely over the wall, and alighted on the roof of a house at some distance beyond it. Its weight and velocity forced it through the tiles, and with a crash which immediately caused the house to be evacuated by its inmates, it penetrated also the garret floor, and rolled upon that of the next storey. ”

“ The tire is heated, and this expands it, or makes it larger. It is put on hot, and when it cools it shrinks, getting smaller, and gripping the rim of the wheel in a strong embrace. That is what the jackets of steel do to the big guns.
A big rifled cannon is loaded from the rear, or breech, just as is a breech-loading shotgun of rifle. That is, the cannon is opened at the back and the projectile is put in by means of a derrick, for often the projectiles weigh a thousand pounds or more. Next comes the powder—hundreds of pounds of it—and then it is necessary to close the breech. ”

“ The range of these giant cannon is enormous and their destructive power great, this being added to by the fact that the explosive shell has replaced the solid round shot of old-time gunnery. A 14-inch gun of 45 caliber can discharge a 1,400-pound projectile at a muzzle velocity of 2,600 feet per second. If we compare this with a locomotive going at the speed of sixty miles an hour, we have in the latter a speed of eighty-eight feet per second to compare with the 2,600 feet per second of the cannon ball. ”

“ They were using for the purpose an old cannon-ball, which must have weighed a bit over the sixteen pounds by the size of it.
Cannon-balls were plenty in those days, for the war was not many years over.
Now, there is always something interesting to me in the sport of a lot of workingmen. They take a bit of a lark with all the more heartiness because they do not have too [Pg 64] many of them. Then, again, this shot-putting contest was for the pure love of the game, and without the selfish incentives of money, prize, or glory. ”

“ You see, Ned, there is, theoretically, nothing to prevent the casting of a steel rifled cannon that would be fifty inches across at the muzzle, and making it a hundred feet long. I mean it could be done on paper—figured out and all that. But whether you would get a corresponding increase in power or range, and be able to throw a relatively larger projectile, is something no one knows, for there never has been such a gun made. Besides, the strain of the big charge of powder needed would be enormous. So I don't want merely to make a giant cannon. ”

“ We would, therefore, need gunpowder one hundred and forty-four times as potent as any gunpowder we now possess if we expected to shoot a cannon ball away from the earth altogether. Need it be added that the resisting power of the cannon would have to be enormously increased to withstand the stress that such an explosive would generate. In fact, it is perfectly certain that no materials known to us would be strong enough to form a weapon sufficiently tough for the purpose. ”

“ A black cannon ball lies in a garden, an ornament like a shell or a fossil, among blue lobelia and green ferns. It is about as big as a cricket ball—a mere trifle to look at. What a contrast with the immense projectiles thrown by modern guns! ”

“ That cannon was never again fired by me. The hair-breadth escape of that small boy haunts me even now. I have never fired a gun in my life; but for experimental purposes I have handled the strongest explosives, including the notorious dynamite; yet never in my life has such a thrill passed through me as did when I realized the almost miraculous escape of my playmate, when the doubled-up projectile was picked up on our parlor floor.
Boys, let an old one beg of you to be careful in handling explosives. ”

“ Everywhere in this liquid mud you see broken glass, unexploded shells, cannon-balls—every trace of camp life. You seem to hear the noise of a cannon-ball falling only two yards away, and from all sides come the sound of balls, which sometimes hum like bees, sometimes groan and split the air, which vibrates like a violin-string, the whole dominated by the sinister rumbling of cannon, which shakes you from head to foot and fills you with terror. ”

“ Now these experiments, though made by Mr. Hutton with cannon-balls of a small size, may nevertheless form just conclusions when applied to cannon-shot of the largest size. And such conclusions inform us of the real force of powder when fired, either in a cannon or a mortar, impelling a ball or bomb of a given weight; that is, they discover with what velocity a given quantity of powder drives those projectiles in a second, or in any other assigned portion of time. ”

“ Cannon balls go furthest at an elevation of 30 degrees, and less as the balls are less; the range is furthest when fired from west to east in the direction of the earth's motion, which for the diurnal rotation on its axis, is at the rate of 1,037 miles per hour, and in its orbit, 66,092 miles.
The air's resistance is such that a cannon ball of 3 lbs. weight, diameter, 2.78 ins. moving with a velocity of 1,800 feet per second, is resisted by a force equal to 156 lbs. ”

“ On the same principle, a hoop thrown from the hand with a spinning-motion inwards, will begin to return before it touches the ground; and also the curious, though not so familiar instance, of a ball fired from a musket, the barrel of which has been bent to the left, being carried at long distances considerably to the right of the object aimed at, in consequence of the rotation of the ball on its axis, caused by the friction against the right side of the barrel overcoming the projectile force, and thus carrying it across the line of aim. ”

“ Bang! and a massive cannon ball tore whizzing over our heads. The shore batteries had us in their range, and the firing from the far-reaching Whitworth guns grows more rapid. Puff after puff rolls up from the long line of battery-covered hillocks, under the bastard flag, and the rolling thunder peals on our ears with the whizzing of death-threatening balls. Oh! the excitement of watching and wondering where the next ball will strike, and whether it will crush a hole right through us, wasting rich human life, and scattering our decks with torn-off limbs and running pools of blood. ”

“ So, also, a cannon-ball having a great velocity may pass through the side of a ship, doing perhaps comparatively little damage, while one moving with much less velocity may do vastly more damage by splintering the wood to a considerable extent. For the same reason a rapid ball hitting a person may occasion less suffering and do less harm than a slow ball; for a rapid ball kills merely the parts which it touches, leaving the flesh around in a sound state, while the slow ball bruises over a large space. ”

“ Calculations were produced with a view of showing that by firing on a particular day the explosion would drive the projectile up to the moon. There was, however, the necessary condition that the speed of projection should be great enough. The gun club were accurate in saying that if the cannon were able to discharge the projectile with a speed twenty or thirty times as great as that which had ever been obtained with any other cannon, then the missile would ascend up and up forever if no further influence were exerted on it. ”

“ The late Joseph Manton has the merit of being the first modern inventor of rifled cannon. His idea was, that if a motion on an axis parallel to the horizon could be given to cannon balls, they would range farther and with greater accuracy. As there exists great difficulty in causing the rifling in a gun to act upon an iron ball, he constructed a cup of wood, into which the ball was fitted, projections being made upon the wood to fit into the groves of the rifle; the spinning motion thus being communicated to the ball by its wooden adjunct. ”

“ If the cannon were loaded with a ball, it must needs cut a swathe like a scythe from the first man to the last, and if it were loaded with small balls, all of us who were near the front must needs go down at once. ”

“ In this game, when balls 2 and 3 are in the same compartment, that is in one of the rectangular spaces between the lines and the cushions, and therefore are not separated by a line, only one cannon is allowed without making at least one of the balls pass the boundary. There is, in fact, no great difficulty in making rules to defeat tricks which are favoured by obscurity; no cannon otherwise lawful need be barred, and as the breaks must be slightly slower time is afforded for inspection, and if necessary for appeal to the referee. ”

“ We forget the usual rate of a cannon-ball in good condition, when he is in training—and before he is at all blown. So do we forget, we are sorry to confess, the number of centuries that it would take a good, stout, well-made, able-bodied cannon-ball, to accomplish a journey to our planet from one of the fixed stars. ”

“ A boy who had been posted on the works, on account of his keenness of vision, to warn the men when a cannon-ball was coming their way, had only just been complaining that they did not heed his warnings, and while he turned to the men this shot which did all this hurt was fired by the enemy. A large cannon-ball in those days weighed 30 pounds, others much less. The author remembers Admiral Colomb telling the Harrow boys in a lecture that a Captain of those days could carry two or more cannon-balls in his coat-tail pocket; the balls of modern guns have to be moved by hydraulic machinery. ”

“ As the time required for the projectile to [6] be thrown from a twelve-inch cannon is only about the sixtieth of a second, sixty of these huge guns could be placed side by side and fired by electricity one after the other, while grandfather’s clock is making but one tick.
Our ideas of duration are but relative. We have seen that the combustion in a cannon, though very rapid to our senses, is actually very slow indeed as compared with the much more rapid combustion of a high explosive ”