The Sun.
London, England, 1864-07-25 00:00:00

LITERATURE,

The Story of the Gune. By Sir James Emerson
Tennent, K,C.S., F.R.S., &e, Longman and
Co.

Had not the fame of Sir E. Tennent been long
ago established in the literary world, his Story of
the Guns would certainly have brought his name
prominently before the public, not so much on account of
the intrinsic worth of the production, which is in reality
only a careful compilation of statistics, as from the acri-
mony with which he has been assailed in many quarters
for having simply told the truth. He states in his preface
that having held a commission as an officer of artillery in a
foreign service during a time of war, he net7.l-eally takes a
great interest in the controversy whie, nas been going on
for the last few years relative to the guns of rival inventors.
It has been his object int the compilation of this work to
give a succinct els' impartial history of the controversy
since its correeeencement ; and as far as facts are concerned
his bold,est critic may be silent, for throughout the
voleane the author has fortified his assertions by continual
reference to blue books and other available sources of infor-
mation. When it is the object of an author to give his
reader a clear insight into a subject so little understood ex-
cept by professional men, it is necessary to enter consider-
ably into detail. This must, to a certain extent, render a
work of this kind tedious, but Sir J. E. Tennent has endea-
voured as far as possible to obviate this by describing the
gradual progress made in the improvement of firearms and
artillery since an early period, and also by furnishing inte-
resting histories of the careers of the two great artillery
engineers whose rival claims to supremacy form the subject
el the present investigation. It is not our intention to
dilate upon the particular forms and constructions of the
various guns which from time to time have been brought
forward. The Armstrong breechloader, which, from the
accuracy of its fire, and the destructive nature of its pro-
jectiles, was without a rival in 1858, was selected by the
committee on rifled cannon, who recommended the imme-
diate introduction of Mr Armstrong's rifled guns for special
service in the field. At this period Mr Whitworth had not
taken any steps to construct a gun on any special plan of
his own. He had simply yielded to the solicitations
of the Government in rifling some brass guns on the hexa-
gonal principle, which had proved so successful with small
arms. At the close of 1858 some cast iron guns which had
been rifled by him burst, when he addressed a communicas
tion to Lord Panrnure, at that time Secretary of War, ex-
plaining the causes of the accident, and deprecating the
further use of cast iron metal for rifled cannon, and received
in answer a letter from the War-office informing him of
the determination of the Secretary of State to discontinue
further experiments with ordnance rifled on his principle.
He then resolved to construct a gun capable of resisting
the extra pressure to which rifled cannon are subjected.
From that time to the present Mr Whitworth has been
diligently engaged in carrying out this determination. Sir
William George Armstrong, his crest rival, is a descendant
of one of the old border far:dies, and was educated for the
law. Unlike many oth:ar gifted men who have been forced
from circumstanc P.'d into uncongenial positions, he applied
himself with '.nclustry and success to the legal profession,
and was ;or many years a member of one of the principle
lege:. firms of Newcastle. Still he never abandoned the
castes which Nature had so unmistakably bestowed, and
which had showed themselves even in his childish games.
When only five or six years old he used to employ himself
in setting a number of spinning wheels in motion by means
of weights descending on strings from the top to the bottom
of his lather's house, and in making these wheels imitate
the grinding of corn, the pumping of water, &c But how-
ever uncongenial the sphere, or unapt the profession, where
there is so strong a bent of the natural genius it is certain
to find a vent, and, accordingly, in spite of his living among
briefs and parchments until his 37th year, the name of Wm.
Armstrong became associated with one of the most remark-
able mechanical inventions of our time, while he was still
practising as a solicitor. He was making an excursion in a
mountainous part of Yorkshire about the year 1835, when
his attention was drawn to th© waste of power in a stream,
which after descending from a considerable height in suc-
cessive cascades, spent its last remaining strength in turn-
ing a mill wheel at the foot of a hill, Although the force
required was dependent on the height from which the water
came, Mr Armstrong remarked that the portion in use was
taken from a level which was only a fraction of the full de-
scent. He perceived the practicability of realising the full
power of the fall by conducting the water in an iron pipe,
and causing it to act upon suitable machinery below, and
applied himself to devising an engine to be worked by water
pressure. He pursued the idea first given by the force of
mountain streams to the construction of artificial towers in
towns, into which water was raised by the steam engine to
give it the requisite "head," The result of his casual visit
to Yorkshire has been known to the world by the construc-
tion of the hydraulic crane, whose silent agency produces
such marvellous effects. Its immense power has been happily
defined by a "Quarterly Reviewer" in these terms—" At
the foot of every crane, under the piston of every hoist,
at every dockgate, unseen and noiseless, the power lies dor-
mant, but a woman's hand, applied to a small handle, will
set in motion a force sufficient to raise a mass weighing 50
1 or 100 tons, and either to place it in the hold of a ship, or
deposit it in any other spot within reach of, the arms of the
crane. With equal ease the gates of docks 100 feet in width
are opened or shut, and the works of the dockyard done
without a stranger being ab:e to perceive what it is that sets
everything in motion." Attempts to realise the power of
water had indeed been previously made in Hungary as
well as in the mines of Cornwall and Saxony,
but not only were these efforts unknown to Mr Armstrong,
but they were so different from his own method that he
retains the unquestionable distinction of this important in-
vention. So successful did it prove that ho was induced
to abandon his profession, and to devote himself exclusively
to that line of life for which nature has especially fitted him.
In conjunction with some friends he established the Elswick
Engine Works, and some years after obtained further dis-
tinction by the construction of his hydro-electric machine,
themost powerful means devised:of producing frictional elec-
tricity. At an unusually early age he was elected Fellow
of the Royal Society. After the battle of Inkermann, in
which two 18 pounder guns, brought up with great diffi-
culty, turned the fortune of the day, Mr Armstrong per-
ceived the importance of giving to field guns the accuracy
and range of the rifle, and removing the impediment of
weight by substituting forged for cast iron guns, He re-
ceived from the Duke of Newcastle a degree of encourage-
ment not cf ten accorded to inventors, and put together his
first wrought gun in the spring of 1855, but ho had still to
go through much arduous labour and many tedious experi-
ments before he considered that ho had attained success.
Ho used to make his .first trials at dawn on the sea shore,
and afterwards occupied a lonely hut amidst the moors, his
targets being placed on the side of a valley, across which
he fir©d by night as well as by day, through the assist•
ance of en ingenious invention of his own. His first
great success was his three pounder breech loader, and
afterwards his 12 pounder, which, for accuracy of range
at that time (1858), astonished every one. Although ho
has succeeded well on the same principle up to 18 and
32 pounders, it is generally admitted that it is in his
light guns that the working of his breechloading prin-
ciple excella all others. Sir William Armstrong has freely
admitted recently that for heavy ordnance the breech-
loading system is a failure, and he has therefore, in
the construction, of his RI inch 300 pounders,
adopted the muzzle loading principle, cutting
the grooves of the rifling in such a manner
that the shot enters the gun easily but fits the bore tight
in leaving it. This is what is denominated the shunt
principle, and whenever the 300-pounder has been tried
against armour plated targets at short range, the shot
has penetrated. That guns of an enormous size can be
constructed upon Sir W. Armstrong's coil principle cannot
now be doubted, whoa the results of the late trials of his
600-pounders at Shoeburyness are taken into consideration.
Sir William Armstrong, as we have seen, was not
brought up to the profession of an engineer, but his
natural bias led him to follow that pursuit. Mr Whit-
worth, on the contrary, is a man of high professional
celebrity, in fact he may be reckoned one of the first, if
not the first among the mechanical engineers of this court.
try. Sir E. Tennent observes that "For this eminence
in his profession Mr Whitworth is indebted to a natural
aptitude for its cultivation, but mainly to an exhaustive
knowledge of its principles and processes, acquired by un-
conquerable perseverance. Endowed with a taste for me-
chanics, and with something like an instinct for overcoming
difficulties, he developed and disciplined his powers by
serving in early life under the ablest masters, Maudslay,
Clement, Holtzappfel, and others of the class whose
genius and ability have raised mechanical art to its pre-
sent high rank in England, especially by the improvement
of those wonderful self-acting engines which under the
name of engine tools are now so extensively used for
working in metals, as well as for the production of other
machines dependent on accuracy and precision. Mr
Whitworth does not belong to the ordinary type of in-
ventors, quick, versatile, and ingenious, acting from im-
pulse on apparent inspiration; his productions, on the
contrary, are the results of slow and deliberate thought,
bringing former observation to bear upon tentative expe-
riment, and accepting nothing as established till it has
undergone proof. Proceeding with a logical severity to
rest further operations only on ascertained facts, his pro-
cess is so strictly inductive, that ho might justly bo desig-
nated the Bacon of mechanics. For the attainment of
perfection it is the belief of Mr Whitworth that the
superiority of all machinery is dependent on two eleenents
—the power of measuring with unerring precision, and
associated with it the faculty of producing a true
plane surface that is, ono so absolutely level,
that when it is opposed to another of equal
truth their contact must be in all parts complete.
The Astronomer Royal, Mr Airey, in his evidence before a
committee of the House of Lords, in 1855, stated that the
degree to which Mr Whitworth had succeeded in making
perfect the planing of surfaces was entirely unknown before
his time.' To such a pitch of excellence has he brought it
by a process peculiar to himself, that a plate of metal
prepared by hint when opposed to the face of another
similarly treated, exhibits a contact so intimate as
Ito enable the operator to lift the under one with
it, as if by its actual adhesion to the upper,
or if less closely applied, so that:the thinnest possible layer
Of atmospheric air may still remain between, the upper plate