Skip to main content

Early fire arms : Cannons

Early fire arms : cannons

The starting of the fire arms can be traced back to 8th century where Chinese used the gunpowder technology to fire projectiles at the enemies.
Later in the early 12th century the cannons were used in the wars in CHINA.
Hand cannons have come into existence in the early 14th century where the big cannons were reduced in the size and the projectiles were kept small. The canon and the projectiles were carried separately the the firing place.
Now as the start of the firearms was cannons, lets discuss the basic working of the connons..

 Operation:

The cannons were were very large and cannot be transported easily from one place to another dynamically. Usually they wee placed on the defense fort walls. 
Cannons have a large cylinder structure in which the gunpowder is assimilated at the closed end and projectile is pressed to the gun powder.
Usually these projectiles were made of iron and were heavy.
When the gun powder is lit by a fire the compressed gun powder gets ignited and releases a high pressure.
The cannon being closed at one end the pressure must be exerted only on the other end where the projectile is placed against the pressure.
The pressure created by the blast of the gun powder pushes the projectile with high force such that the cannon ball/projectile is thrown from the cannon barrel.
If the barrel length is long, the the distance covered by the cannon ball is also is large and vice-verse.



The above picture shows the cannons used olden days.
After this type of cannon there came the portable cannons, which is illustrated in the picture below:

 

In the early 14th century there came the small canons which are portable by soldiers, which are "hand cannons" 




These all developments take us to the modern "grenade launcher", whose existence can be traced to hand cannons. the working of the grenade launchers are very similar to that of the hand cannons. But we dont use the iron projectile/cannon balls in the case of grenade launchers.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Snap-lock , Snaphance and flintlock

Snap-lock, Snaphance and Flintlock These three fire arms work under same mechanism. The difference is the protective measures development  in each of the fire arms. The order of the fire arms is snaplock snaphance flintlock percussion cap Mechanism: The operation works on the old concept of fire sparks ( when two rocks are rubbed against each other the friction between them causes a spark and eventually fire when the sparks are in contact with a dry grass or to be more precise, a conductor which ignites under a slight high temperature). The firearm consists of a flint material and a steel plate placed against each other. When the flint is held with a spring, potential energy is stored in the spring. When the trigger is released the potential energy is transferred to the clamped flint and the clamp moves forward and strikes the hardened steel producing sparks. These sparks flash pan travels through the touch hole and ignites the gun powder and boom. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

History of firearms

Pistol/Guns/Fire arms 1       history All about the pistols, hand guns had begun in early 12 th century in China. There took the birth of the firearm named hand cannon in 1200 and from there the knowledge has spread throughout the world. It is believed that the gun powder technology has spread to the west through Silk Road. Europe and Arabs have been using them in 14 th century, and japan has started mass producing them in 1543, but they know about the gun powder in the beforehand. After the gun powder was invented by China the advanced firearm was introduced by Portuguese in 15 th century. These were used until 1720 when they were replaced by flintlocks. The evolution of firearms is shown below: Hand cannons (14 th century) Hand locks- hand gonne (15 th century) Match lock Wheel lock (15 th century) Snap lock Snaphance (1550) Dog lock (17 th century) Flintlock (17 th century ) Percussion cap...
Post a Comment
Read more

Match lock

Match lock: Now that we have reduced the cannon balls or projectiles and made them into a compact size, the barrels used for the projectiles are also small. The force that must be applied for the projectile must be enough that it penetrates the enemy. The guns which are used in the early 14th century have used match lock technology. match lock nothing a defined technology. It works on the same concept of the cannons. But he thing is it is lit by a fire using a combustible substance. The gun has a barrel in which the projectile is placed and pushed tightly towards the gun powder. this gun powder is lit by a dry thread/wick which has its extension into the chamber in which the gun powder is filled. As soon as the power is ignited, it creates a blast and throws the projectile toward the target. These match locks were remained in the use until 17th century. These matchlocks had a great disadvantage- They take time to lit the wick and even when the wick is lit it takes ...
Post a Comment
Read more