Artillery
The greater part of Manton's career was to be spent at loggerheads with the British Army. Manton managed to interest the army in purchasing a larger a version of his wooden cup design to be used in rifled artillery. Manton worked tirelessly to improve the very inaccurate cannon, and did so by creating a new type of ammunition. Firstly, the ammunition was to be loaded in a rifled cannon. Secondly, the cannonball was attached to the wooden cup that fit into the rifled grooves of the cannon, which was in turn connected to a sack of gunpowder, thus eliminating the need for powder and shot to be loaded separately. The idea of having the powder fixed behind the shot in a disposable cartridge is one still extant today; it is the basis for modern bullet design. It also helped pave the way for breech-loading weaponry.
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Famous quotes containing the word artillery:
“We now demand the light artillery of the intellect; we need the curt, the condensed, the pointed, the readily diffused—in place of the verbose, the detailed, the voluminous, the inaccessible. On the other hand, the lightness of the artillery should not degenerate into pop-gunnery—by which term we may designate the character of the greater portion of the newspaper press—their sole legitimate object being the discussion of ephemeral matters in an ephemeral manner.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)
“Another success is the post-office, with its educating energy augmented by cheapness and guarded by a certain religious sentiment in mankind; so that the power of a wafer or a drop of wax or gluten to guard a letter, as it flies over sea over land and comes to its address as if a battalion of artillery brought it, I look upon as a fine meter of civilization.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)