A New Kind of Gun

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 19, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 24.

A New Kind of Gun.

THERE has been tested recently on our sea-coast a new kind of gun, which it is hoped will be useful in protecting our harbors. It contains a dynamite cartridge which is expelled from the gun by air-pressure. Dynamite would do very great destruction if it should be shot out of an ordinary cannon; but as it explodes by anything in shape of a shock, it would naturally do more damage to the cannon which expelled it than to the object against which it was directed. A gun, however, has been invented to send this dynamite cartridge against a fort, or an approaching iron-clad. The machine is upon exhibition in the Delamater Iron Works in New York. It looks like a forty-foot brass pipe, mounted on a steel girder. This is the barrel and carriage of the four-inch dynamite pneumatic gun. It weighs a ton, and is capable of sustaining a pressure of 1,000 pounds to the square inch. The dynamite cartridge is encased in soft metal, within a shell of brass, and fitted with a wooden tab. It is expelled by compressed air, and when the projectile, flying at speed, strikes head-on against a resisting surface, a hard metal pin embedded in the soft metal is forced into the fulminate at the head of the cartridge and discharges the dynamite. Should the cartridge hit the deck of an iron-clad vessel, it would tear it all to pieces. It is claimed that this cartridge can be thrown three miles with a precision never obtained by gunpowder. Our Government has been experimenting at Fort Hamilton, N. Y., and has done some wonderful execution. Should we have a foreign war, these guns would be our dependence against foreign fleets, as we have no defenses nor any navy. It is said these dynamite guns may be used as field-pieces, which would make war so destructive that it could not be carried on.—Sel.