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NEW EXPERIMENTS

TRACT 34.

TRACT XXXIV.

new experiments in gunnery ; FOR determining the

FORCE OF FIRED GUNPOWDER, THE INITIAL VELOCITY OFCANNONBALLS, THE RANGES OF PROJECTILES AT DIFFER-ENT ELEVATIONS, THE RESISTANCE OF THE AIR TO PRO-JECTILES, |THE EFFECT OF DIFFERENT LENGTHS OF GUNS,AND OF DIFFERENT QUANTITIES OF POWDER, &C, &.C.

Sect. 1 .

At Woolwich, in the year 1775, in conjunction with someable officers of the Royal Regiment of Artillery, and otheringenious gentlemen, was first instituted a course of expert*ments on fired gunpowder and cannon balls, similar to thepresent course. My account of them was presented to theRoyal Society , who honoured it with the gift of the annualgold medal, and printed it in the Philosophical Transactions for the year 1778.* The object of those experiments, was,the determination of the actual velocities with which ballsare impelled from given pieces of cannon, when fired withgiven charges of powder. They were made according to

* The public delivery of the medal to Dr. H. and the pronouncing of anexcellent appropriate oration on that occasion, on the 50th of November 1778,to the largest and most respectable audience that ever attended such a meetingof the Royal Society , by their excellent president Sir John Pringle , was the lastact of that gentleman in his official capacity: his delivery of the medal, andstepping out of the chair for the last time, occurring in the same moment.——IJe was immediately succeeded by Sir Joseph Banks .

The paper itself contained the first part of a series of military experiments,then projected, and conducted through many succeeding years. An account ofsome more of these annual experiments was given in my 4to. volume of Tracts,published in 1786. The substance of those publications is now delivered in amore condensed form, and connected with the continuation and conclusion of tb^experiments, being the more important part of the same, accompanied with de-ductions from the whole, tending to render them useful to the purposes of natu-ral philosophy in general, and of the artillery practice in particular.