Culverin
A culverin was a relatively simple ancestor of the musket, and later a medieval cannon, adapted for use by the French as the ""couleuvrine"" (from "couleuvre" "grass snake") in the 15th century, and later adapted for naval use by the English in the late 16th century. The culverin was used to bombard targets from a distance. The weapon had a relatively long barrel and a light construction. The culverin fired solid round shot projectiles with a high muzzle velocity, producing a relatively long range and flat trajectory. Round shot refers to the classic solid spherical cannonball. Hand culverins. The  term "culverin" is derived from the Latin, "colubrinus", or "of the nature of a snake". It was originally the name of a medieval ancestor of the musket, used in the 15th and 16th centuries. The hand culverin consisted of a simple smoothbore tube, closed at one end except for a small hole designed to allow ignition of the gunpowder. The tube was held in place by a wooden piece which could be held under the arm. The tube was loaded with gunpowder and lead bullets. The culverin was fired by inserting a burning slow match into the hole. James IV  of Scotland was an enthusiastic user of hand culverins in 1508. He held shooting matches in the great halls of Holyrood Palace and Stirling Castle, took a culverin to stalk deer in the park of Falkland Palace, and shot at sea birds from a row boat off the Isle of May with his culverin. These hand culverins soon evolved into heavier portable culverins, around in weight, which required a swivel for support and aiming. Such culverins were further equipped with back-loading sabots to facilitate reloading, and were often used on ships. Many were immobile due to their heavy weight . Field culverins. There were three types of culverin in use, distinguished by their size: the "culverin extraordinary", the "ordinary", and the "least-sized". There were also smaller versions, including the "bastard culverin" (), shot and the "demi-culverin" or "culverin-moyen" (), shot. Overall, the culverin was a significant advance. Since it fired a ball of iron and relied on gunpowder for propulsion, the heavy ball meant a relatively stable flight and the gunpowder propulsion meant a fast and long-range projectile. A replica "culverin extraordinary" has achieved a muzzle velocity of 408 m/s, and a range over using only minimal  elevation. This velocity and mass imply that the cannonball had a kinetic energy of roughly when leaving the muzzle. In Britain, Brigadier General Michael Richards was appointed Master-General of the Ordnance in 1714 and he commissioned a Danish expert, Albert Borgard, to design a new artillery system. Borgard did away with the traditional nomenclature of culverins, sakers and minions, and devised a new system based on the weight of shot that each gun used, from 4 to 64 pounds. Although Borgard's gun designs were quickly superseded, the practice of naming ordnance by weight of shot persisted in Britain  into the 20th century.