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 young women, what can they not learn, what can they not achieve, with Columbia University annex thrown open to them? In this great outlook for women’s broader intellectual development I see the great sunburst of the future.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)
“The experience of a sense of guilt for wrong-doing is necessary for the development of self-control. The guilt feelings will later serve as a warning signal which the child can produce himself when an impulse to repeat the naughty act comes over him. When the child can produce his on warning signals, independent of the actual presence of the adult, he is on the way to developing a conscience.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“As long as fathers rule but do not nurture, as long as mothers nurture but do not rule, the conditions favoring the development of father-daughter incest will prevail.”
—Judith Lewis Herman (b. 1942)