Original subtitles

chuckle role in history an invention

which has been praised and denounced

served hero and villain alike and

carries with it moral responsibility to

understand the gun is to better

understand history

[Music]

it began a thousand years ago a

mysterious alchemist makes three

ordinary ingredients to make a substance

that burst into fire at the touch of a

flame it came to be known as gunpowder

[Music]

just a toy to some but warlords and

Kings realize this miraculous mixture

had the power to crush castle walls to

pierce the armor of knights and battle

struggles among nations would never be

the same

[Music]

[Music]

from the blast of a cannon shell the

sharp crack of a soldier's rifle each

time a gun is fired we can add one more

line to an ever-growing Chronicle the

spectacular violence that a gun produces

commands our attention not only for the

danger it presents but for the story it

tell the gun says listen to me because I

changed history the tail is as distant

in time as it is in place it begins with

an unknown alchemists the first to

prepare a concoction we know now as

gunpowder somewhere in China sometime

around the Year 1000 someone discovered

the properties of sulfur saltpeter and

charcoal which when mixed together in

the proper amounts burned very rapidly

or even explode

it was magic it was unexplainable it was

beyond belief and the person who had the

power over the powder definitely had an

advantage from China knowledge of the

mysterious powder was most likely

carried to the west through writings of

Arab scholars the earliest record of its

appearance in Europe comes in England in

the middle of the 13th century when a

Catholic monk first wrote down the

formula in a latin manuscript take seven

pots of saltpeter five of young

hazelwood choco and five of sulfur and

thus you can make thunder and lightning

if you know the means Roger Bacon 1250

ad there's an interesting story about

Roger Bacon he had to hide discovery in

the formula for gunpowder in an anagram

and the reason for that is he had to

avoid looking like he was practicing

magic the black art which was being

persecuted by the church at the time to

him it was science but to others that

were more ignorant obviously this is

magic but there is another monk whose

name is often given as the true inventor

of gunpowder

he was Berthold Schwarz whose statue can

still be seen today in Freiburg Germany

where he is said to have been born in

reality Schwarz is only a myth created

out of our need to attach a name to each

of man's great inventions the Schwarz

legend apparently first appeared in a

text more important for its factual

information something called the

firework book the firework book is a

collection of recipes about gunpowder I

think of it as the joy of cooking with

gunpowder rather than food as the

subject it was first written in Germany

around 1400 at a time when books were

hand copied and handed down from master

to apprentice as this one was for more

than a hundred years these crude

illustrations come from one manuscript

in Britain's Royal Armouries collection

only 47 copies of the book survived

today

I've seen a number of copies of the book

of fireworks and some of them actually

smell of sulfur or gunpowder indicating

that they were actually stored and used

in the workshops where these things were

compounded in the Orient the Chinese

used their gunpowder largely for

fireworks but it was only in the West

that the true long-term development of

guns took root

the earliest picture of a gun appeared

in a British manuscript by Walter of

Milla mate written in 1326 very strange

to the modern eye this gun was armed

with a giant arrow the earliest guns

were extremely crude after all gunpowder

was a new technology and no one knew

what a gun was supposed to look like

cannon the largest guns were costly as

they were first made using the same

expensive techniques used to cast church

bells but it was the nature of gunpowder

itself that played the biggest role in

the evolution of these weapons

in Europe a key factor in keeping early

guns small was the price of gunpowder it

was so costly it could not be used in

large quantities the high price was

caused by Europe's extreme shortage of

saltpeter gunpowder's most critical

ingredient saltpeter is a simple

nitrogen compound but it comes from a

rather repellent source decomposed

animal droppings originally it was very

expensive because it had to be imported

to Europe from China where it can be

mined from natural deposits but the lack

of such resources forced Europeans to

learn to make it from scratch by boiling

down their own barnyard waste it must

have been horribly smelly it must have

been terribly dirty but the result was

absolutely necessary if you are going to

make gunpowder at any kind of reasonable

price by making it themselves

European solved the saltpeter shortage

but then there were other problems early

gunpowder wasn't exactly explosive it

burned with a fizz more than a bang its

ingredients also tended to separate

during shipment and if it got damp it

wouldn't light at all so the early texts

taught powder makers a technique that we

now call Corning Corning starts off in a

funny way I found this picture in a

Swiss manuscript of the 1440s which

shows how gunpowder was formed into

lumps or cakes by hand and left to dry

in the Sun you could then break this

apart on the eve of battle when you

needed the Gunpowder in your gun

while early gunpowder was fine as dust

Corning formed it into slightly larger

grains or corns as the British would say

the process not only solved the dampness

and separation problems but as the

technique advanced it also happened to

make gunpowder amazingly more powerful a

gun counter testing device based on a

19th century design demonstrates how

much more powerful early style gunpowder

burns slowly along the 8-foot track

so slow is the burn that it takes 50

seconds from beginning to end but what a

difference a little Corning makes in

just four seconds the corn gunpowder is

up in smoke once a gunpowder has been

through a wet stage it will always burn

differently

it's a remarkable property the powder

makers of Europe had no idea that

Corning would change the nature of

gunpowder so dramatically their primary

goal was to improve its shelf life they

hardly realized the impact their work

would have on the shape of guns to come

the new powder burns so much faster than

the old with so much more power that the

big cannons of the time simply couldn't

handle it

it just blew the gun to pieces so

although they improve the powder there

wasn't much they could do with it until

it improved the guns but smaller guns

had few of these problems as with any

physical device when scaled to small

sizes the strength is greater when

compared to its weight so handheld guns

were ideally suited to take advantage of

the new powerful powder gun makers found

that longer barrels produced superior

acceleration so that bullets fired from

these guns flew through the air at a

thousand miles per hour

such weapons began to appear in the mid

15th century the first supersonic

devices ever created by man leather on

the groundwork for revolution in warfare

fuelled by weapons of fire

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

in the year 1412 at the height of the

Hundred Years War between England and

France the French city of borscht was

under siege one chronicler described a

terrible weapon that blasted apart the

city walls a cannon called grreat bigger

than the others

stones of enormous sweat and when it

went off the thunderous noise could be

heard for miles away as if you doin

noise made me furious

of help siege cannon were developed

earlier than any other kind of gun and

they served the purpose of battering

walls down and reducing the time that it

took to take a fortified site before

cannon siege warfare was lengthy and

difficult invading forces set up joint

siege towers to confront the defenders

and battering rams were used to breach

the entrances a siege could take months

even years

the first canons dating from the early

1300s shot fire arrows made to ignite

the flammable rooftops of besieged

cities even a century later pictures in

the famous firework book showed battle

scenes with defenders using hooks to

snare the burning arrows but by this

time they were more likely to be fired

by small crossbows while a cannon was

used to hurl stone shot against the once

impregnable castle walls while breaching

the castle wall with the cannon was

simply a question of patience you

decided whereabouts on the wall you were

going to shoot and you shot at it until

eventually the wall collapsed there was

no scientific approach it was just brute

force and ignorance

bang bang bang away at the same spot

until something gave way but the threat

posed by cannons was slow to develop at

first these big guns and gunpowder were

so expensive that cannon remained small

and few in number even later artillery

was often far more useful for its bark

than its bite nothing this loud nothing

this smelly nothing this flashy hope you

build had ever appeared on the European

battlefield before and there are

numerous examples where armies or

Garrison's simply gave up the moment

cannon were brought in and used only

with only a few shots in the 1400s as

the cost of gunpowder dropped the size

of cannon grew the first big guns had

been cast from solid bronze that was too

costly for medieval military budgets but

soon cheaper methods were developed

first of all we had cast weapons then

some bright fellow said well if we make

barrels for putting wine and beer in out

of staves and oops round it can we make

a gun barrels a minor thing called a

barrel that's why it became called a

barrel but they made the gun body out of

strips of metal bound with iron hoops

and so is the 15th century dawn the age

of massive siege cannons began Wain as

much as several tons they launched

immense stone balls against their

vulnerable targets the biggest of all

was the bum heart punch tire the largest

caliber Stone guns surviving today the

diameter of its bore is more than 31

inches and the stone is shot weighed

1533 pounds cannons weren't very

efficient but big masonry walls made

very good targets they were firing very

large stone balls the rate of fire was

extremely slow but none of that made

much difference the cannon was a better

wall basher than the mechanical

catapults that preceded it by the late

15th century military designers used

iron or lead cannonballs allowing them

to reduce the size of artillery without

reducing its punch to avoid damage from

the more powerful corn gunpowder cannon

were again cast in solid pieces usually

a bronze european craftsmen were still

just learning the art of casting iron

leaving the stronger metals use in

cannon to the future once more to the

breach dear friends once more few people

realize it but it was a cannon that

opened the breech inspiring one of

Shakespeare's most famous lines the

stirring speech is given by England's

King Henry the fifth during the Hundred

Years War at the siege of Harfleur in

France the real event took place in 1415

and Henry's 12 big cannon made it

possible for him to take the fortified

city in only five weeks a generation

earlier King Edward the third needed a

year to subdue the city of Calais

on the battlefield though cannon had yet

to prove themselves the siege of a

castle provided big guns with large

stationary targets but early cannon were

so unwieldy they were hardly effective

against troops it was no easy feat to

bring these monster guns into play on

any target that the commander might

choose remember the state of the roads

at that time most of them were little

more than horse paths when it rained the

wagons would sink up to their axles the

use of guns and open-field warfare can

be traced to the Belgian city of Bruges

where every year citizens celebrate the

procession of the holy blood

the procession marks an event after the

Second Crusade in 1150 when the Count of

Flanders returned with a holy relic a

crystal and bottle said to contain the

blood of Christ in medieval times the

procession was celebrated with an excess

of eating and drinking a tradition

enjoyed by the city's soldiers in the

Year 1382 the night before they were to

meet rebellious forces from the city of

Ghent it is known as the Battle of baver

hoods felt and it is one of the very

first in which guns made a difference on

the battlefield the soldiers of Ghent

were outnumbered five-to-one when the

battle came to its climax they fired

what appears to have been a volley into

the forces of the city of Bruges to

immediately turn tail and ramp of course

it may be that they were hungover

because they've been celebrating tonight

before

but a new and different threat was about

to appear on the battlefield small

cannons each light enough to be held and

aimed by an individual gunner it was the

birth of the handgun a weapon that would

change the nature of what it meant to be

a soldier forever

[Music]

boy entered to be a soldier at the age

of 18 years in the year of our Lord

15:48

at the time of Queen Elizabeth the first

Humphrey barwick a self-proclaimed

gentleman soldier and captain sat down

to write out his thoughts about war and

guns muskets are weapons of great force

ina this day most feared for few or no

armors will or can defend the force

thereof Barwick was a soldier of the gun

in an age when the knight in armor was

still a romantic ideal but troops

supplied with shoulder arms were finally

becoming strategic elements of European

armies two centuries after hand guns had

arrived looking at the earliest of these

weapons like the Huq and books up you

can understand why it took so long the

early guns do look ridiculous to us but

they were the state of the art during

the time the hackenbush is essentially a

pipe with one end closed off and a hook

at the other end to help stabilize very

primitive the Hakan books ax or hook gun

began to appear along with other types

of hand cannons in the 1300s right

alongside their larger cousins paintings

and drawings of the time show these

awkward weapons and use but they hardly

had much impact in the way war was waged

incredibly a few of these guns have

survived until today this one dates from

about 1440 and is as primitive as they

come no trigger

no hammer no stock just a rudimentary

tiller typically this weapon was fired

by two men forged more than five and a

half centuries ago this gun is so simple

the experts feel it still should work

but there remains some doubt after all

it hasn't been fired in more than 300

years

as the handgun evolved so did its name

from the German Hakan books uh the

French turned it into aqua booze and the

English became hark huevos the weapon of

humphrey Barwick the heart koi booth was

the first weapon that I did use it is

our weapon most offensive that as yet

air was invented and in the hands of a

skillful soldier most terrible and

deadly the heart way boosts of Humphrey

Barwick was part of an arsenal that

included the slightly larger musket a

name eventually used for all guns of

this time to ignite the weapon a soldier

carried his match a rope soaked with

saltpeter so it would smolder reliably

without going out with the refinement of

corned gunpowder the handguns Barrel

became long and narrow it's crude

mounting pole became a true shoulder

stock and finally included a simple

mechanical firing device called a lock

thus the three essential ingredients of

every shoulder arm even today lock stock

and barrel appearing around 1450 these

first mechanically firing guns were

known as match locks and they were a

tremendous breakthrough in their day

many older handguns had to be held with

one hand and ignited with the other but

the match lock allowed troops to use

both hands to level and aim the weapons

preparation and loading was still

cumbersome though bullets went in from

the front and a priming pan had to be

filled to ignite the charge in the

barrel a misfire would mean the

proverbial flash in the pan

but the max lock was usually reliable

and when it came time to fire all it

needed was a pull on the trigger match

locks became widespread by the late 15th

century but a hundred years later when

Humphrey Barwick was using one in

England a controversy raged

traditionalists favored England's deadly

longbow they looked on guns with

contempt and a proud Humphrey Barwick

answered back the archers in times past

where the best shot that were not yet in

these days where weapons a fire of the

drug they used no yours nor mine is able

to bear Armour sufficient to defend

their bodies from death ironically

enough the longbow is a ballistically

superior weapon when compared to the

musket it has a much longer range three

to four times the archer can shoot at a

much higher rate than a musket and yet

there's one fundamental disadvantage to

the musket that the longbow has that

Humphrey Barwick missed and that's the

economics for years the longbow helped

the British to win battles against their

enemies but guns were simply cheaper a

skilled Archer needed a lifetime to

train a skilled gunman needed only weeks

[Music]

military armor already thickened against

the longbow was made even stronger to

protect against bullets but muskets the

more powerful cousins to the arc Ibis

could pierce armor at close range

heralding the end of early Warfare's

most romantic symbol the mounted Knight

a musket ball when contacted with armor

what it'll do it will pierce the front

plate losing a lot of his momentum after

that it will hit the back plate and then

bounce back toward the front and you

will get this ball bouncing back and

forth this literally turns into a small

meat grinder tearing everything up

inside another innovation would also

spell trouble for the armored Knight it

was called the wheel lock first

developed around 1500 while the max lock

needed its priming pan opened just

before firing the wheel lock did it

automatically and the clumsy burning

match was eliminated completely with the

newer weapon to operate the wheel lock

we wind the wheel it used a

spring-loaded wheel to make sparks

something like a modern-day cigarette

lighter the pan cover is closed we place

the dog on the pan then pull the trigger

the wheel lock beated possible to carry

a musket pre-loaded ready to fire

expensive and complex this weapon was

too costly for ordinary infantrymen who

usually had to buy their own weapons but

it was not too expensive for a new kind

of mounted soldier armed with wheel lock

pistols

how did firearms put an end to

knighthood the wheel lock pistol is the

critical device because it could be

carried charged and ready to fire at a

moment's notice with two or three of

these a writer could approach to within

a very close range of a mounted Knight

and any shot that hit was likely to be

devastating even if he missed the night

or even if the Knights armor was more or

less bulletproof the horse was almost

certain to get it and if the noble

knight could be struck down by the shot

of a pistol or musket what would become

of the tradition of chivalry where were

the heroes on the field of battle the

gun changed the meaning of such things

Gunners at the time were an interesting

soldier they were actually looked upon

with a little bit of disdain because the

musketeer was considered more like a

murderer a thug it wasn't very noble to

stand there and you know reach out and

touch somebody at a long range but they

learned very quickly that musketeer was

quite valuable and in my duty towards

Her Majesty's country thus I do conclude

with my opinion touching warlike weapons

and the use thereof in the time of

Humphrey Barwick at the close of the

sixteenth century the age of the knight

was coming to an end but the gun was yet

to become the principal weapon of

warfare guns were still slow to load and

so inaccurate they were often more

disruptive than destructive to an

attacking army the weapon that would

change history still had far to go

before would leave its mark

[Music]

in the 15th and 16th centuries a new

light was shining on Europe in Italy

Leonardo da Vinci exemplified what we

now call the Renaissance man artist

inventor philosopher Leonardo was one of

many men who accepted commissions not

just for works of art but for

instruments of war another Italian

applied his great learning to the flight

of cannonballs

he was mathematician nikola fontana

Tattaglia and in 1537 he published the

first book on a science now known as

ballistics

why should Gunners or these gunnery

commanders care about books on artillery

well four starts it minimizes the

training costs if a gunner already knows

the basic properties of a ballistic

trajectory he doesn't have to spend that

time wasting ammunition discovering it

for himself pure science it turns out

would be essential to the advancement of

guns and some of the most revered

scientists in history would play their

parts Galileo is of course famous for

his basic discoveries in astronomy such

as the use of the telescope to discover

the moons of Jupiter but he also had to

earn a living as a mathematician and in

order to do so he spent a good deal of

his life applying mathematics and

mechanics to solving fundamental

military problems

among Galileo's contributions was the

military compass a handheld calculator

renaissance-style an improvement on

earlier instruments it allowed Gunners

to measure the elevation of their cannon

and figure the amount of powder they

needed without having to do pages of

difficult calculations advancing the

work begun by tart alia Galileo Sir

Isaac Newton and others created the

scientific groundwork that would give

commanders their first true

understanding of the complex

trajectories of artillery shells in the

ranks of infantry though pure science

would be little help for the next two

centuries muskets would continue to be

fired on Maus because they were so

inaccurate few shots ever hit any target

one scholar calculated 260 bullets for

every man hit others more pessimistic

estimated three to ten thousand shots

had to be fired to produce just one

casualty today we can understand the

muskets performance by looking at a

baseball pitcher and the spin he puts on

his curveball once the ball comes out of

the musket barrel it has a spin and this

spin will cause the ball to curve just

like a pitcher will cause a baseball to

spin as in a curveball the problem is

the spin is random and so beyond

100-yard range it is almost impossible

to tell where this ball will end up

the solution to the accuracy problem

would eventually come in the form of the

rifle while other guns were smooth

inside the rifles Farrell had spiral

grooves making the bullet rotate as it's

fired just as a football rotates in a

forward pass like the football the spin

makes the bullet fly straight ok the

target that we're shooting at today

would be small and relatively out of

range for a musket but with a rifled gun

such as this one it's a piece of cake

standing more than 50 yards away the

rifle is aimed at a target that is only

8 inches square far smaller than the

silhouette of an opposing soldier even

an unskilled rifleman can make the shot

with little chance of missing now a

smoothbore musket is fired on the same

range the random spin of the musket ball

will make it fly in a curved path

hitting the target will be mostly a

matter of luck the rifle superiority was

outweighed by its high cost and the slow

loading of its tight-fitting bullet so

with the inability of muskets to find

their targets accurately gun makers

looked for other ways to improve them by

1620 anew kind of lock appeared making

the musket easier to use in ever before

it was based on the well-known practice

of striking Flint against steel to start

fires it was called the flintlock the

way this works is you'd start off by

pulling the cock to half cock so that it

couldn't go off prematurely then you

would charge the pan with primer fill

the pan close the pan

for the balance of the powder into the

bore and with the powder in and the

patch and the ball Ram at home then he

would take pull the cock to full cock

now it's ready to fire

and so the flintlock became yet another

gun to give us a colorful saying it's

safety feature allowing the cock to be

locked in mid position made commanders

tell their men never to go off

half-cocked until the much later arrival

of practical rifles the flintlock would

remain the pinnacle of technology and

military shoulder arms it was

inexpensive easy to use and faster to

load than anything that came before the

paper cartridge introduced by Sweden's

King Gustavus Adolphus in the 1630s

further simplified the loading procedure

increasing the musket speed and in the

quest for speed commanders created what

has become the modern military

philosophy formal training uniform

clothing standardized weapons a new

mechanical approach to war much of it to

increase the rate of fire and a gun that

would otherwise be a failure

one of the reasons why this attitude of

mechanizing infantry troops was so

important was to optimize the lethality

of smoothbore muskets one analogy you

can think of is that when you have a

squadron or a company of soldiers firing

the muskets simultaneously the effect is

that of a giant shotgun blast with

faster firing soldiers no longer needed

to stand in massive block formations

instead they spread out in linear ranks

two or three D after the early 1700s a

flintlock musket with a bayonet attached

was infantries primary weapon the pikes

spears and Lance's of antiquity had

finally disappeared the power of guns

became unchallenged but the role would

soon change to challenge the power of

kings

in the world of the 17th century the

power of Europe encircled the globe

Great Britain took its place among the

Empire builders establishing colonies

east and west with troops and their guns

to protect them but in North America

those guns would cede the clouds of

revolution what they had in America was

a malicious system that required every

able-bodied man to have a firearm and

although they didn't train constantly

with it they were more familiar with it

say than their European counterpart and

in fact in Europe except for a little

bit of a tradition in England this most

of the continent did not have militias

because after all if you arm your

populist Kings are facing a potential

rebellion Britain's militia system in

the colonies helped it protect them

without the expense of additional troops

but guns in America had an even older

tradition any hearty soul living in the

countryside needed a gun as a useful

tool for hunting and for protection

against animals hostile natives or

criminals but by 1775 guns and politics

arrived at a crossroads in the

countryside of Massachusetts

[Music]

[Music]

without guns in the hands of the

Colonials the shot heard round the world

might never have been fired at Lexington

green and though it began a revolution

that the Americans won they were easily

beaten by the British that day in 1775

less well known as the beating the

Redcoats took on the road back to Boston

when Patriots in the Massachusetts

countryside badgered them every step of

the way

using the smoothbore gun so common then

an American household during the war a

few Americans harassed the British with

straight-shooting rifles but it was an

expensive weapon and not as widely owned

as many people claimed the rifle in

trained hands can be a very effective

weapon but a few riflemen picking off

officers were being able to pick off a

few people on a battlefield is not the

way you win a war what helped when

American independence was using

european-style guns with European style

tactics with rifles yet to fulfill their

promise the flintlock musket remained

the primary weapon used by soldiers in

the Revolution when rebels met redcoats

each side pointed muskets at the other

the Americans ultimately forced to fight

the British

in the British style at the Battle of

Bunker Hill one of the revolutions most

famous commands was shouted by American

general Israel Putnam as the British

approached the command don't fire until

you see the whites of their eyes could

have been given by anybody on any

battlefield at that time because muskets

were most effective under a hundred

yards and could be devastating at 50

yards or less so waiting until you could

see the whites of their eyes would be a

command that you'd hear in Europe as

well as in America

the Americans might've won Bunker Hill

but as well as they fought they had to

retreat when their gunpowder ran out in

fact the story of the gun and the

Revolution was more a tale of supply

than anything else

facing critical shortages General George

Washington got most of his guns from

France

knowing the professional British Army

could not be defeated with patriotic

zeal Washington was also well aware of

the scientific skill needed for

battlefield artillery for this reason he

chose a bookseller with little military

experience as the commander of his big

guns Henry Knox before the Revolutionary

War owned a bookstore which she

specialized in military literature as a

good bookseller he of course wanted to

familiarize himself with the literature

during the siege of Boston he presented

himself to General George Washington and

George Washington was so impressed with

his qualifications in both theory and

basic military practice that he

immediately made him the

commander-in-chief of the Continental

Army's artillery Knox's first command

took him to the woods of New York in the

winter of 1775 his assignment taking

120,000 pounds of captured cannons from

Fort Ticonderoga dragging them through

the snow and placing them on the hills

above Boston as a result the British

were forced to end their occupation of

the city Knox would apply his skill

throughout the war taking it even to

Yorktown where he commanded the

artillery at the battle which forced the

British to surrender

but a different uprising would help

write a further chapter in the guns role

in battle the French Revolution led to

the age of Napoleon a powerful enigmatic

leader who first rose through the ranks

on his textbook knowledge in the use of

cannon few people are aware of the fact

that Napoleon's early military career

and his early military successes were

directly dependent on his extremely

high-level prowess as a calculus student

he was originally an artillery officer

and he got into that line of work so to

speak because of his high scores in

mathematics it was the age of reason in

which science was applied to everything

including the fighting of Wars there was

one textbook Napoleon certainly knew

inside out the new principles of gunnery

written by British scientist Benjamin

Robbins what Robbins did was to engage

in the first highly accurate experiments

to investigate the basic ballistic

properties of a musket ball this was of

course the ballistic pendulum it's an

invention most people have never heard

of built in 1742 the ballistic pendulum

was deceptively simple a gun was fired

at the pad and a tape recorded the

pendulum swing which gave us the bullet

speed something no one had ever been

able to measure before from that Robbins

calculated the last great unknown in

ballistics the role of air resistance

which he found to be 120 times greater

than the force of gravity

[Music]

the work of Benjamin Robbins and those

that went before him meet Field

Artillery increasingly accurate an

absolute necessity when smoke-filled

battlefields obscured all but the first

shot cannons were now lighter and their

large wheeled carriages made them far

more maneuverable the addition of a

small elevating screw made aiming easier

than ever before

mu nishan diversified with shotgun like

grapeshot used a close-range and

primitive exploding shells at long the

most common load however remained the

simple iron cannonball the primary

artillery tactic using the solid iron

balls was to ricochet or skip them

across the ground into a body of troops

cavalry or infantry and even though a

small ball doesn't seem to carry that

much punch the fact is even at a slight

angle it could take out six or a dozen

men as it tore through the ranks

inflicting horrible wounds to a body of

troops that wasn't experienced or not

veteran this could be very unnerving

even more unnerving was a new kind of

exploding shell a British invention of

1784 lofted above a formation of troops

it was designed to explode in midair the

inventor was a man whose name is

familiar to all of us today lieutenant

Henry shrapnel shrapnel exploding shells

were probably the most effective during

this period much better than just

regular exploding shells because they

contained extra balls inside that spread

out in a lethal pattern and could hit

far more troops if it hit near them

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the shrapnel shell was just one

development at a time when gun design

was advancing quickly but 500 years had

elapsed since guns were first used

during that time progress was slow even

smaller Puritans took decades or even

centuries still governments and generals

never gave up and never stopped seeking

more gun inventors have always had the

incentive of reward or profit even if

it's under the guise of patriotism and

military leaders always want the next

best weapon to give them an edge on the

battlefield and that goes on regardless

of the technology and no matter how long

it takes the search for the better gun

never ends in the first part of the 19th

century early gun technology was at its

height only the future would supply a

common soldiers weapon that would shoot

with accuracy cannons firing shells that

would explode on impact

bullets fired by machine guns that would

change the battlefield so drastically

the era of early guns had come to an end

the tales of their successors were yet

to be told

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