Ball

History

The first gun S drew from the stone balls, which were distinguished from the projectiles of catapults or of Trébuchet only by their more regular geometrical form.

About 1500, the stone ball was replaced by the ball in cast iron, as soon as the forging mills could manufacture barrels of gun able to resist the high pressures necessary to fire a projectile 3 times denser. The use of the cast iron, a long time called " iron coulé" also a certain standardization of the size of the balls and thus of the gauge of the guns allowed.

The reform of French artillery in 1774 by Gribeauval led to the construction of guns drawing from the balls of 4,8 and 12 pounds.

In 1784, the lieutenant Henry Shrapnel of British Royal Artillery invented a spherical hollow ball containing an explosive load allowing to disperse balls of rifle.

At that time, the Marine used a large variety of balls, in addition to the spherical ball used against the hull and the Mât S of the Navire S enemies:

balls with bar : 2 balls connected by a bar;
rowed balls : 2 balls prolonged by two bars connected between them;
chained balls : 2 balls connected by a chain;
ball with chain (S) : projectile made up of two half-spheres (or four quarters of sphere) connected by chains.

These projectiles were more particularly used to cut down the Gréement of an enemy ship, or against the men of crew gathered on the bridge.

The spherical ball could be heated “with the red” before being introduced into the gun for its capacities flamers. Fire was particularly dangerous on the ships of the time and the operation also remained very dangeureuse for the gunner. The expression to draw with teeth and nail remained in the common language to mean the idea of a very intense criticism.

The ball remained used until the end of smooth artillery, about 1860. Then, the projectiles adopted the cylindrical and shaped form forwards adapted to the striped barrel guns.

Other meanings

the ball is an agglomerate of ovoid coal of form;
the sorrow of the ball was inflicted with convicts who were to trail a heavy ball attached to a foot by a chain;
with the illustrated direction:

when one speaks about a thing: a ball is a constraint or an obligation prejudicial, which one cannot get rid easily;
when one speaks about a person:

the ball designates (familiar language) a painful and stupid individual who trails with a group of people, the latter having evil to demolish itself some (cf the film the Ball). Often the people seek to render comprehensible to him but it has evil to accept the obviousness;

External bonds

History of the technique of artillery & its projectiles

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