Artillery are ranged weapons that launch munitions far beyond the range and power of infantry firearms. Early artillery development focused on the ability to breach defensive walls and fortifications during sieges, and led to heavy, fairly immobile siege engines. As technology improved, lighter, more mobile field artillery cannons developed for battlefield use. This development continues today; modern self-propelled artillery vehicles are highly mobile weapons of great versatility generally providing the largest share of an army's total firepower.
A firearm is any type of gun that uses an explosive charge and is designed to be readily carried and used by an individual. The term is legally defined further in different countries.
The Gatling gun is a rapid-firing multiple-barrel firearm invented in 1861 by Richard Jordan Gatling. It is an early machine gun and a forerunner of the modern electric motor-driven rotary cannon.
A mortar is usually a simple, lightweight, man-portable, muzzle-loaded weapon, consisting of a smooth-bore metal tube fixed to a base plate with a lightweight bipod mount and a sight. Mortars launch explosive shells in high-arching ballistic trajectories. Mortars are typically used as indirect fire weapons for close fire support with a variety of ammunition.
A shell, in a military context, is a projectile whose payload contains an explosive, incendiary, or other chemical filling. Originally it was called a bombshell, but "shell" has come to be unambiguous in a military context. A shell can hold a tracer.
A driving band or rotating band is a band of soft metal near the base of an artillery shell, often made of gilding metal, copper, or lead. When the shell is fired, the pressure of the propellant swages the metal into the rifling of the barrel and forms a seal; this seal prevents the gases from blowing past the shell and engages the barrel's rifling to spin-stabilize the shell.
A breechloader is a firearm, in which the user loads the ammunition from the breech end of the barrel, as opposed to a muzzleloader, in which the user loads the ammunition from the (muzzle) end of the barrel.
A smoothbore weapon is one that has a barrel without rifling. Smoothbores range from handheld firearms to powerful tank guns and large artillery mortars.
The Minié ball or Minie ball, is a type of hollow-based bullet designed by Claude-Étienne Minié, inventor of the French Minié rifle, for muzzle-loading rifled muskets. It was invented in 1847 and came to prominence in the Crimean War and the American Civil War, where it was found to inflict significantly more serious wounds than earlier round musket balls. Both the American Springfield Model 1861 and the British Pattern 1853 Enfield rifled muskets, the most common weapons used during the American Civil War, used the Minié ball.
Field artillery in the American Civil War refers to the artillery weapons, equipment, and practices used by the Artillery branch to support the infantry and cavalry forces in the field. It does not include siege artillery, use of artillery in fixed fortifications, or coastal or naval artillery. Nor does it include smaller, specialized artillery classified as small arms.
Ross Winans (1796–1877) was an American inventor, mechanic, and builder of locomotives and railroad machinery. He is also noted for design of pioneering cigar-hulled ships. Winans, one of the United States' first multi-millionaires, was involved in national and state politics, a southern-sympathizer and was a vehement "states' rights" advocate. Winans was briefly arrested after the Baltimore riot of 1861. His outspoken anti-federal stance as a member of the Maryland House of Delegates, the lower chamber of the General Assembly, led to his temporary arrest on May 14, 1861. At the time of his arrest, Winans was returning on a Baltimore and Ohio Railroad train from an early session of the legislature that was being held in the western Maryland town of Frederick to avoid the Union Army-occupied state capital of Annapolis in April–May 1861 to consider the possibilities of state secession during the early decisive period of the American Civil War. Winans was related to James McNeill Whistler through marriage.
Charles Tillinghast James was a consulting manufacturing engineer, early proponent of steam mills, and United States Democratic Senator from the state of Rhode Island from 1851 to 1857.
A steam cannon is a cannon that launches a projectile using only heat and water, or using a ready supply of high-pressure steam from a boiler. The first steam cannon was designed by Archimedes during the Siege of Syracuse. Leonardo da Vinci was also known to have designed one.
In military munitions, a fuze is the part of the device that initiates function. In some applications, such as torpedoes, a fuze may be identified by function as the exploder. The relative complexity of even the earliest fuze designs can be seen in cutaway diagrams.
A gun is a device designed to propel a projectile using pressure or explosive force. The projectiles are typically solid, but can also be pressurized liquid, or gas. Solid projectiles may be free-flying or tethered. A large-caliber gun is also called a cannon.
In artillery, caliber or calibre is the internal diameter of a gun barrel, or, by extension, a relative measure of the barrel length.
A centrifugal gun is a type of rapid-fire projectile accelerator, like a machine gun but operating on a different principle. Centrifugal guns use a rapidly rotating disc to impart energy to the projectiles, gaining kinetic energy from steam, electricity or other engine source rather than gunpowder. The centrifugal gun was one of a number or different ideas proposed to address the problems of smoke, over-heating, and premature detonation, that were eventually solved by smokeless powder, improved metallurgy, and shock-and-heat stable explosives.
Sylvanus Sawyer was a United States inventor.
The 3-inch ordnance rifle, model 1861 was a wrought iron muzzleloading rifled cannon that was adopted by the United States Army in 1861 and widely used in field artillery units during the American Civil War. It fired a 9.5 lb (4.3 kg) projectile to a distance of 1,830 yd (1,670 m) at an elevation of 5°. The 3-inch rifle was not as effective in firing canister shot as the heavier 12-pounder Napoleon, but it proved to be highly accurate at longer ranges when firing common shell or spherical case shot. There was only one reported case of a 3-inch ordnance rifle bursting in action. This was in stark contrast to the similarly-sized cast iron 10-pounder Parrott rifles which occasionally burst without warning, inflicting injury on the gun crews. The Confederate States of America lacked the technology to manufacture reliable copies of the 3-inch ordnance rifle. However, the Confederate States Army respected the weapons and employed those captured from Federal forces.
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