IMPROVEMENTS IN THE LOADING OF MUZZLE-LOADING BIG GUNS AND THE APPARATUS CONNECTED THEREWITH
Year: 1868

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by William Frederick Monday
Green at the Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his
Petition, on the 28th July 1868.
I, WILLIAM FREDERICK MONDAY GREEN, of Staines Road, Sunbury,
in the County of Middlesex, do hereby declare the nature of the said
Invention for "IMPROVEMENTS IN THE LOADING OF MUZZLE-LOADING BIG GUNS
AND THE APPARATUS CONNECTED THEREWITH," to be as follows:-
To perform by machinery the operations of ramming home the charges
of muzzle-loading big guns, cannons, and other ordnance, and sponging
them out in towers, turrets, or other situations so that the gun will
require but to be retired or run inboard a short distance for charging,
and without at any time obtruding or exposing any portion of the
apparatus outside or beyond the port hole, thereby economizing time,
space, and labor, and this is effected by the substitution of a spiral spring,
or compound spiral springs, or other arrangement having an equivalent
property of expansion and contraction for the ramrod, or other means as
ordinarily adopted. This spring or springs properly furnished to fulfil
the functions required of it to take position opposite the cannon's mouth
and to be altogether within the tower, turret, or other place containing

page_text: the gun and to be mechanically governed, but a small proportion of space
will be needed in front of the muzzle of the gun so that the same gun
can be worked in a smaller tower, turret, chamber, or other place, which
in the case of a ship will give lightness or the opportunity to protect the
gun more, while there will be a smaller mark for the enemy. Time and
labor will be saved by each and all of the following, viz., the gun
needing to be retired or run back inboard for loading but a lesser distance,
the circumference of the circle the muzzle of the gun or the port hole
can be required to describe being less, and the substitution of machinery
for hand labor. Provision is made, as herein-after shown, to hold in front
of the gun, (and entirely within the tower, turret, or other place the gun
may occupy) a spiral spring, or compound spiral springs, or other arrange-
ment having an equivalent property of expansion and contraction
properly furnished to fulfil the requirements. This spiral spring (or
springs) is governed as to its insertion into and extraction from the gun
by a chain or other equivalent arrangement running through its interior
and attached at one of its extremities to the free end of the spiral spring
before mentioned, and at its other extremity attached to a wheel by
which it may be wound up and shortened or let out and lengthened, thus
permitting the spring (or springs) to exert its expansile force to travel
up the interior of the gun and bringing it back to and retaining it in its
compressed form; this wheel may be worked by steam, or hand, or other
motive power. As to the position of the spiral spring (or springs) before
mentioned, one end of the same is fixed to a slab which working in
grooves with compensating balance weights or otherwise so that the
spiral spring (or springs) can be placed in position opposite the gun's
mouth and be removed out of the way at. pleasure, the slab being made
in two layers with a horizontal hinge in the middle between them; the
spiral spring (or springs) may be adapted in position to any angle of
depression or elevation of the gun..