Heinlein's Brass Cannon
Linaweaver owns a small brass cannon. The cannon was originally acquired by science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein and his wife Virginia Heinlein, sometime prior to 1960. For nearly 30 years, the firing of the brass cannon was a 4 July tradition at the Heinlein residence. Virginia Heinlein retained the cannon after her husband's death in 1988, and it was bequeathed to Linaweaver in her will, after Virginia died in 2003. Linaweaver restored the cannon to working order and subsequently posted a 2007 video of it being fired several times (with very small charges) on YouTube.
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Famous quotes containing the words brass and/or cannon:
“Uncle Ben’s brass bullet-mould
And powder horn, and Major Bogan’s face
Above the fire, in the half-light, plainly said
There’s naught to kill but the animated dead;”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“We may say that feelings have two kinds of intensity. One is the intensity of the feeling itself, by which loud sounds are distinguished from faint ones, luminous colors from dark ones, highly chromatic colors from almost neutral tints, etc. The other is the intensity of consciousness that lays hold of the feeling, which makes the ticking of a watch actually heard infinitely more vivid than a cannon shot remembered to have been heard a few minutes ago.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)