Development
The characteristics of a quick-firing artillery piece are:
- Buffers to limit recoil, so the barrel can quickly return to position after being fired.
- A breech mechanism which allows rapid reloading
- Single-piece ammunition, e.g. a cartridge containing both shell and propellant. (This criterion was sometimes taken as the definition of quick-firing, but many quick-firing guns dispensed with it).
These innovations, taken together, meant that the quick-firer could fire aimed shells much more rapidly than an older weapon. In 1887, an Elswick Ordnance Company 4.7-in gun fired 10 rounds in 47.5 seconds, almost eight times faster than the equivalent 5-inch breech loading gun.
Another important factor was the introduction of 'smokeless powder' - nitrocellulose, nitroglycerine or cordite - which created far less smoke than gunpowder, meaning that gun crews could still see their target.
Read more about this topic: Quick-firing Gun
Famous quotes containing the word development:
“The proper aim of education is to promote significant learning. Significant learning entails development. Development means successively asking broader and deeper questions of the relationship between oneself and the world. This is as true for first graders as graduate students, for fledging artists as graying accountants.”
—Laurent A. Daloz (20th century)
“And then ... he flung open the door of my compartment, and ushered in “Ma young and lovely lady!” I muttered to myself with some bitterness. “And this is, of course, the opening scene of Vol. I. She is the Heroine. And I am one of those subordinate characters that only turn up when needed for the development of her destiny, and whose final appearance is outside the church, waiting to greet the Happy Pair!””
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“Somehow we have been taught to believe that the experiences of girls and women are not important in the study and understanding of human behavior. If we know men, then we know all of humankind. These prevalent cultural attitudes totally deny the uniqueness of the female experience, limiting the development of girls and women and depriving a needy world of the gifts, talents, and resources our daughters have to offer.”
—Jeanne Elium (20th century)