A Course of Instruction in Ordnance and Gunnery: Text (Classic Reprint) - Tapa blanda

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Excerpt from A Course of Instruction in Ordnance and Gunnery: Text

The great advances which have been recently made in our knowledge of the properties of gunpowder have subjugated the "Spirit of Artillery," as this agent has been termed, to a seemingly docile servitude. These, with corresponding improvements in Metallurgy, have led to such changes in nearly all that relates to fire-arms as to make necessary a comprehensive revision of the course of Ordnance and Gunnery, established by the late Colonel James G. Benton in 1861, and modified from time to time by his successors on the Academic Board.

The subject has outgrown the limits of the small encyclopedia in which Benton comprised all that was then essential for the ordinary officer, as well as for the student, to know of the materiel of war.

It has also lost much of the stability which characterized it when spherical projectiles were still generally employed. The labors of men of science and the energy of inventors are continually extending the boundaries of knowledge and undermining positions which appear most fixed.

Therefore, instead of giving to the course a descriptive character, it appears advisable to frame it so as to present as simply as possible such of its principles as are the most important, and appear the best established.

By employing the short time available for this course in teaching such principles, the student, although less familar with existing forms and methods than after the study of the former course, may possibly be better fitted to understand the causes of changes in materiel which are now so frequent, and, as his experience increases, to wisely advise the direction that such changes should take.

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