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**Springfield Armory National Historic Site**

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| Object Name/Title:  | CANNON, HAND                                   |
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| Catalog Number:     | SPAR 710                                       |
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| Classification:     | HISTORY\                                       |
|                     | T&E FOR SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY\                  |
|                     | ARMAMENT-FIREARM                               |
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| Artist/Maker:       |                                                |
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| Eminent Figure/     |                                                |
| Organization:       |                                                |
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| Place of            |                                                |
| Manufacture:        |                                                |
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| Medium/Material(s): | METAL, WOOD                                    |
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| Measurements:       | TUBE: 39.3CM 15 1/2\" SOCKET: 18.4CM 7 1/4\"   |
|                     | \_\_ \_\_                                      |
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| Date Manufactured:  | c 1400                                         |
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| Use Date:           |                                                |
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| Historical/Cultural | European                                       |
| Period:             |                                                |
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| Cultural ID:        |                                                |
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| Key Descriptor:     |                                                |
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| Description:        | EUROPEAN HAND CANNON\                          |
|                     | Maker unknown - Early (late 14th, early 15th   |
|                     | century?) wrought iron hand cannon believed to |
|                     | be of European origin and consisting of a      |
|                     | wrought iron tube with a socket and mounted on |
|                     | the end of a wood staff. The tube is made of   |
|                     | one piece of iron wrapped around and           |
|                     | forge-welded with a longitudinal seam. There   |
|                     | are five reinforcing bands around it. The tube |
|                     | has a bore diameter of 2 1/8\" at the muzzle.  |
|                     | The tube itself is 15 1/2\" long and the       |
|                     | socket portion is an additional 7 1/4 inches.  |
|                     | Fitted into the socket is a round wooden staff |
|                     | four feet long approximately 1/4\" in          |
|                     | diameter. The small vent at the rear of the    |
|                     | tube is not enlarged and is clear. Bore is     |
|                     | extremely smooth. The wood staff appears to be |
|                     | a replacement.\                                |
|                     | \                                              |
|                     | No visible markings.\                          |
|                     | \                                              |
|                     | Army #0652 - See drawing attached SA8112.\     |
|                     | \                                              |
|                     | In photo with multiple photos this hand cannon |
|                     | is on top.\                                    |
|                     | \                                              |
|                     | This hand cannon was loaned to West Point in   |
|                     | 1967.\                                         |
|                     | \                                              |
|                     | Exhibit label: \"One of the very earliest      |
|                     | firearms, dating from the late fourteenth      |
|                     | century, was simply a tube mounted on a pole   |
|                     | that could be pointed toward the enemy. A      |
|                     | match had to be held in the hand, making it    |
|                     | awkward to aim and fire the piece with any     |
|                     | accuracy.\"\                                   |
|                     | \                                              |
|                     | Notes: \"Those blessed ages were fortunate     |
|                     | which wanted the dreadful fury of the devilish |
|                     | and murdering pieces of ordnance, to whose     |
|                     | inventor I am verily persuaded that they       |
|                     | render in hell an eternal guerdon (reward) for |
|                     | his diabolical invention, by which he hath     |
|                     | given power to an infamous, base, vile, and    |
|                     | dastardly arm to bereave the most valorous     |
|                     | knight.\" - Don Quixote\                       |
|                     | \                                              |
|                     | This is a \"gonne\" in its earliest and most   |
|                     | simple form - essentially a piece of pipe on   |
|                     | the end of a stick. Ammunition for these       |
|                     | pieces consisted of stones, or possibly stones |
|                     | wrapped in leather or sheet lead and propelled |
|                     | by \"white powder.\" Their range and           |
|                     | effectiveness was extremely limited, but they  |
|                     | depended on their noise, flash and smoke to    |
|                     | frighten the enemy, particularly the horses.   |
|                     | Undoubtedly, a man could probably throw a      |
|                     | stone as far as these would fire one, and      |
|                     | other weapons such as crossbows were certainly |
|                     | more effective.\                               |
|                     | The date of the origin of small or portable    |
|                     | arms is as difficult to fix as is that of the  |
|                     | cannon. One writer says they were first        |
|                     | produced by the Italians in 1430, but mention  |
|                     | is made in the Chronicles of Boulogne in 1397  |
|                     | of \"hand cannon,\" or, as they are            |
|                     | designated, \"sclopos,\" and subsequently      |
|                     | \"sclopeto,\" and hence \"escopette,\"         |
|                     | \"escopeta,\" etc. Valturius, who wrote in     |
|                     | Latin, speaks of them as machines of war used  |
|                     | by the Romans of antiquity, and he called      |
|                     | ballista, from the name of the ancient         |
|                     | ballistes of the Roman armies. They were also  |
|                     | termed bombards, hand cannon, and culverins.   |
|                     | At first they were simply small cannon         |
|                     | fastened to a stick and fired from the ground, |
|                     | their front end supported by a crutch or       |
|                     | rest.\                                         |
|                     | \                                              |
|                     | \"The first hand cannons, which appeared       |
|                     | around the middle of the fourteenth century,   |
|                     | were neither portable nor reliable compared to |
|                     | handguns of the nineteenth and twentieth       |
|                     | centuries. Yet these hand-held firearms        |
|                     | represented a first step toward the invention  |
|                     | of guns designed to be fired with one hand.    |
|                     | The earliest hand cannons were short tubes of  |
|                     | either cast bronze or wrought iron. At first,  |
|                     | the cannons were made with a touchhole, which  |
|                     | permitted application of a glowing ember of    |
|                     | some smoldering tinder to ignite the black     |
|                     | gunpowder. Evidence indicates that early hand  |
|                     | cannons were clumsy, two-handed weapons, and   |
|                     | most required a wooden pole, called a tiller   |
|                     | or haft, to help aim and control it. By the    |
|                     | mid-fourteenth century, however, small guns    |
|                     | were becoming increasingly popular. In 1364,   |
|                     | the town government of Perugia, on the Italian |
|                     | peninsula, ordered 500 hand cannons, each to   |
|                     | be no longer that the palm of a person\'s hand |
|                     | (\"500 bombards of a span in length, which can |
|                     | be carried in the hand\"). These early hand    |
|                     | firearms were made in a variety of sizes,      |
|                     | shapes, and bore diameters. Swedish examples   |
|                     | dating from the late 1300s range in length     |
|                     | from 193 millimeters (bronze hand cannon from  |
|                     | Morko) to 300 millimeters (bronze hand cannon  |
|                     | for Loshult). The wrought-iron hand cannon     |
|                     | found at Tannenberg castle in Hesse was about  |
|                     | 320 millimeters long, with a muzzle bore       |
|                     | diameter of 17.5 millimeters. It was           |
|                     | fabricated in 1399, the year the castle was    |
|                     | destroyed during a siege.                      |
|                     |                                                |
|                     | Clearly, the fourteenth century pistol - the   |
|                     | word \'pistol\' was possibly derived from the  |
|                     | Bohemian pist\'ala or from the Italian         |
|                     | pistola - was not a handgun as we define it    |
|                     | today. The length of the tiller depended on    |
|                     | the length of the barrel, with the rudimentary |
|                     | stock averaging one meter long. The hand       |
|                     | cannon was the common ancestor of the handgun  |
|                     | and the shoulder-fired weapon, and many years  |
|                     | passed before a clear differentiation was      |
|                     | made. Although, they followed separate but     |
|                     | related paths of development, the handgun and  |
|                     | the shoulder-fired weapon shared a common      |
|                     | objective: defeating the enemy.\" - Edward C.  |
|                     | Ezell\                                         |
|                     | \                                              |
|                     | LOAN HISTORY:\                                 |
|                     | Army# 0652 - Loaned to Major Samuel Gordon,    |
|                     | Holyoke, Ma. from May 6, 1959 to May 7, 1959.\ |
|                     | Army# 0652 - Weapon loaned to the Sahara       |
|                     | Antique Gun Show, Hotel Sahara, Las Vegas,     |
|                     | Nev. from 20 January 1969 to 2 February 1969.  |
|                     | At that time weapon was appraised at           |
|                     | \$200.00.\                                     |
|                     | \                                              |
|                     | References:\                                   |
|                     | Ezell, Edward C. HANDGUNS OF THE WORLD.        |
|                     | Stackpole Books. Harrisburg, Pa. 1981.         |
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