Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III PROGRESS IN IGNITION On no part of the gun has more thought and labor been expended than upon he means of touching off the charge after the weapon is loaded. Indeed, for the first three or four centuries this seems to have been the chief subject over which gun inventors pondered, and it was here that they gained the most ground in overcoming the difficulties with which nature has beset firearms from the beginning. It is likely that the very birth of the gun was delayed by the failure to solve the puzzle of getting fire into the powder charge behind the projectile. Support is given this view by the recent finding of ancient cannon which had apparently no means of ignition other than by a train of powder leading in at the muzzle, and past a loosely fitting projectile. While the making of a small hole at the breech, through which only a comparatively slight proportion of the whole body of gas could escape, seems a ridiculouslysimple contrivance, the same can be said of any invention after it is made. As an example of this truth, consider how many thousands of years the world waited vainly for a machine that would sew cloth, until Elias Howe accomplished the fact, chiefly by transferring the eye of the needle from its blunt end to a place near its point. At any rate, the existence of those old ventless cannon proves the interesting fact that their makers did not know of or did not have faith in ignition through a small hole in the breech of the piece. Furthermore, the relationship between cannon and squib is made clear because both were ignited in the same way, that is, from the open end of the powder tube. As for the hand gun, however, the first ones were fired by means of the vent at the breech, through which a heated wire was inserted. So far as simplicity a... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.