Mineral Point tribune. (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1869-1938, 1871-01-12
French Internal Machines.
The Pail Mall Gazette says :

In the recent great sOrtle made by
the French from Paris, Gen. Ducrot
brought into action one of those new
engines of destruction, to the invention
of which the present war has gwen so
great an impetus. This in an amor
plated locomotive, FURNISHED with two
powerful mitrailleurs, also protected by
armor, and originally intended for the
railway bridge at Pont du jour,
whence it was to throw bullets on to
the heights of Meudon. This
novel machine, which weighs
altogether some six tons, has
been manufactured at Calls, the
we'll known mechanical engineer of
Paris, to whose establishment the city
is so much indebted for the extraordi-
nary efforts that have been made to
supply it with cannon and other means
certainly contributed a great deal to
develop the inventive talent of France;
far hardly day passes without some
new implement of destruction being
submitted to the Government of
National Defence. Under the spur
of frequent defeat they have
produced the Marekderberg mitrailleur,
firing two hundred and fifty balls a
minute, and the Montiguy, firing four
hundred and eighty, as well as the
Durant steam mitrailleur, which dis
charges no less than four thousand five
hundred in the same space of time, and
the 'Faucheuse," or mower, which is
said to operate without noise, smoke or
fire, to have IA range of from five han
dred to six hundred yards. and to cost
only thirty-fve francs, with all the
necessary apparatus for firing three
hundred thousand projectiles; so that,
if every bullet really had its billet,
the French by employing this weapon
might rid themselves of the whole
of their enemies for something
less than one hundred francs In adj
dition to the above, many novel de
scriptions of shells have also been pro-
posed, if not actually tried, among
which are the Gaudin fire-bonb, the
improved Menestrol shell, bombs emit
ting sutiocating vapors, and so on.
But recent number Of the Gaulois
gives an account of new projectile far
surprising anything yet heard of for
its murderous effects, which, indeed,
would seem to be of so terrible a char
acter that the dreaded Greek fire must
have been child's play compared with
it. 1t is rocket, costing little to
manufacture and easy to fire, and is
said to have range of three or four
miles Experiments with it, conducted
by Commission consisting of
engineer and artillery officers
and professors of the Conservatoire DIES
Arts ct Meters, have given, we are
told, the most satisfactory results so
far as the destructive properties of the
new projectlle are concerned. During
one of the trials a rocket was fired
against large iron tank filed with wa
ter, causing the liquid to boil over and
run along the ground in a sheet of
flame. A violent dctonation rent the
air, the tank and its supports were
thrown STEWARDS and descended again,
broken into small fragments. Luckily
for the Prussians, and perhaps for the
French, too, the commission were so
overcome, so the Gaulois says, by the
results of this experiment that they
hesitate to recommend the adoption of
such a terrible weapon for fear of
placing France without the ban Of civ
ilized nations.