The early device would consist of a large metal tube, preferably copper due to its high thermal conductivity, which would be placed in a furnace. One end of the tube would be capped and the other loaded with a projectile. Once the tube reached a high enough temperature, a small amount of water would be injected in behind the projectile. In theory, da Vinci believed the water would rapidly expand into vapour, blasting the projectile out of the front of the barrel.
Age of steam
Various unsuccessful efforts were made during the age of steam to create working steam machine guns and cannons using methods and technology derived from steam locomotives.
In 1826–29, a 17.5 mm bore experimental steam cannon was developed by Colonel Karelin of the Imperial Russian Corps of Communications. The barrel was of green copper in a red copper casing; it was capable of firing cannonballs at a rate of 50 rounds per minute. Tests in 1829 failed and the gun was transferred to the arsenal of St. Petersburg. It is now in the Military Historical Museum of Artillery, Engineers and Signal Corps in St. Petersburg.
Prototype Holman Projector, an anti-aircraft grenade projector, in action in 1940
A successful World War II steam cannon was the Holman Projector, which was used to launch explosive Mills bombs into the air to create a defensive barrage against low-flying enemy aircraft.[2] These later steam cannons were fired by rapidly introducing a burst of highly pressurized steam into the chamber behind the projectile, accelerating the projectile up the barrel to a high speed, much like an air gun, only more powerful. The fundamental function of the device was basically the same as a steam engine, only with a projectile taking place of a piston. The Holman Projector was produced by Holman Brothers of Cornwall, who specialised in pneumatic equipment for mining. The first Projectors were powered by compressed air, stored in high pressure cylinders. After a successful defence of the SSHighlander in August 1940, downing two Heinkel floatplanes, there was a demand for more projectors to be fitted to small naval trawlers.[3] Since these vessels were steam-powered but had no compressed air system, the Admiralty requested Holmans to develop a steam-powered version of the Projector. There were concerns by Treve Holman over the effects of heat on the Mills bomb projectile. A test was arranged, where a borrowed council steam roller was used to 'cook' the Projector and projectile, at 190°C for 20 minutes before the projectile was safely fired to 1,000 feet altitude.[4]
A recoilless rifle, recoilless launcher or recoilless gun, sometimes abbreviated "RR" or "RCL" is a type of lightweight artillery system or man-portable launcher that is designed to eject some form of countermass such as propellant gas from the rear of the weapon at the moment of firing, creating forward thrust that counteracts most of the weapon's recoil. This allows for the elimination of much of the heavy and bulky recoil-counteracting equipment of a conventional cannon as well as a thinner-walled barrel, and thus the launch of a relatively large projectile from a platform that would not be capable of handling the weight or recoil of a conventional gun of the same size. Technically, only devices that use spin-stabilized projectiles fired from a rifled barrel are recoilless rifles, while smoothbore variants are recoilless guns. This distinction is often lost, and both are often called recoilless rifles.
A coilgun, also known as a Gauss rifle, is a type of mass driver consisting of one or more coils used as electromagnets in the configuration of a linear motor that accelerate a ferromagnetic or conducting projectile to high velocity. In almost all coilgun configurations, the coils and the gun barrel are arranged on a common axis. A coilgun is not a rifle as the barrel is smoothbore. The name "Gauss" is in reference to Carl Friedrich Gauss, who formulated mathematical descriptions of the magnetic effect used by magnetic accelerator cannons.
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 smoothbore weapon is one that has a barrel without rifling. Smoothbores range from handheld firearms to powerful tank guns and large artillery mortars.
Internal ballistics, a subfield of ballistics, is the study of the propulsion of a projectile.
A pneumatic weapon is a weapon that fires a projectile by means of air pressure, similar in principle to the operation of pneumatic tube delivery systems. The term comes from a Greek word for "wind" or "breath" (πνεῦμα).
The light-gas gun is an apparatus for physics experiments. It is a highly specialized gun designed to generate extremely high velocities. It is usually used to study high-speed impact phenomena, such as the formation of impact craters by meteorites or the erosion of materials by micrometeoroids. Some basic material research relies on projectile impact to create high pressure; such systems are capable of forcing liquid hydrogen into a metallic state.
The Holman Projector was an anti-aircraft weapon used by the Royal Navy during World War II, primarily between early 1940 and late 1941. The weapon was proposed and designed by Holmans, a machine tool manufacturer based at Camborne, Cornwall. A number of models were produced during the war years, but all worked on the principle of a pneumatic mortar, using compressed air or high pressure steam to fire an explosive projectile at enemy aircraft.
A lithobolos refers to any mechanical artillery weapon used and/or referred to as a stone thrower in ancient warfare. Typically this referred to engines that propel a stone along a flat track with two rigid bow arms powered by torsion, in particular all sizes of palintonon.
Model warship combat is an international club activity, in which participants construct radio-controlled scale models of actual warships, most commonly those built by various nations prior to 1946, such as the USS Des Moines, HMS Dreadnought, or the German battleship Bismarck. The models are armed with pneumatic cannons, and fight against one another on ponds and lakes. Model warship combat is sometimes considered to be a form of Naval Wargaming, but can also be considered a water-based version of Robot Combat, since much of the internal systems and concepts are the same as radio control electronics, and in some cases possess similar pneumatic systems.
This Timeline of heat engine technology describes how heat engines have been known since antiquity but have been made into increasingly useful devices since the 17th century as a better understanding of the processes involved was gained. A heat engine is any system that converts heat to mechanical energy, which can then be used to do mechanical work.They continue to be developed today.
A dynamite gun is any of a class of artillery pieces that use compressed air to propel an explosive projectile. Dynamite guns were in use for a brief period from the 1880s to the beginning of the twentieth century.
A pneumatic cannon is typically a large-calibre projectile launcher that uses compressed air as a propellant. Other related terms are pneumatic weapon and air gun. It may refer to:
A potato cannon is a pipe-based cannon which uses air pressure (pneumatic), or combustion of a flammable gas, to launch projectiles at high speeds. They are built to fire chunks of potato, as a hobby, or to fire other sorts of projectiles, for practical use. Projectiles or failing guns can be dangerous and result in life-threatening injuries, including cranial fractures, enucleation, and blindness if a person is hit.
A gun is a ranged weapon designed to use a shooting tube to launch typically solid projectiles, but can also project pressurized liquid, gas or even charged particles. Solid projectiles may be free-flying or tethered. A large-caliber gun is also referred to as a cannon.
The Winans Steam Gun was a steam-powered centrifugal gun used during the American Civil War, which used centrifugal forces to propel projectiles.
The Architonnerre (Architronito) was a steam-powered cannon, a description of which is found in the papers of Leonardo da Vinci dating to the late 15th century, although he attributes its invention to Archimedes in the 3rd century BC.
A ram accelerator is a device for accelerating projectiles or just a single projectile to extremely high speeds using jet-engine-like propulsion cycles based on ramjet or scramjet combustion processes. It is thought to be possible to achieve non-rocket spacelaunch with this technology.
A gunpowder engine, also known as an explosion engine or Huygens' engine, is a type of internal combustion engine using gunpowder as its fuel. The concept was first explored during the 1600s, most notably by famous Dutch polymath Christiaan Huygens. George Cayley also experimented with the design in the early 1800s as an aircraft engine, and claims to have made models that worked for a short time. There is also a persistent claim that conventional carboretted gasoline engine can be run on gunpowder, but no examples of a successful conversion can be documented.
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, replacing gunpowder with centrifugal force.
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