FIRE-ARMS AND PROJECTILES: RECORDED PATENTS. IN proportion as nations become

intelligent, wars diminish in brutality. The art of slaying is reduced to a kind of chess game, in which those pos- sessing the best weapons and the best powers of calculation even with in- ferior numbers win the day. And in proportion as victory becomes certain, there is less desire on the part of the intelligent to obtain it save for worthy purposes, and the unintelligent have a proportionate fear of stirring up strife. We may therefore assume that by the time war has been made a perfect science, it will cease to exist save as a means, when other means fail, to coerce barbarians into good behaviour. On this remning, they also are benefactors of their species who give their time and energy and skill to perfect the processes of destruction and render weapons of war unerring and more and more widely destructive. Swin. dlers thrive through the ignorance of honest people and coarse brutes overpower refined people who are unskilled in scientific resistance. But the club is no match for the.pike' the musketeer falls before the rifle; the regiment of cavalry is scattered like chaff before well-served artillery ; and if we find that artillery is vanquished by the bearers of needle guns and Millie rifles, it is merely a proof that the science of artillery is in as. rear and needs more studying. We have been led to these remarks by thoughts of the existing war, and the processes by which the civilized nations of the West and South are to wage it against the barbarians of the East and North. No former age of the world has beheld such a spectacle as that of nations joined in arms for no purposes of ambition but for the pursuit of justice, to put down the non-progressive element of mere military centralized despotism, and give full scope to the advancement of general humanity in the arts con- ducive to human happiness.

In the furtherance of this righteous war, attention has been strongly turned to the question of improvement not merely of the art of war but of the implements by which war is to be carried on in future. The Board of Ordnance has for this reason called on the Commissioners of Patents to furnish a volume comprising all the objects aimed at by patentees from the earliest periods ; wisely judging that this would form a good index of the essential points in which improvement is desirable, and that it would also furnish many valuable contributions towards the accomplishment of the desirable objects. That volume is now before us.* Many persons object to the principle of granting patent monopolies to individuals for limited periods : it is evident, however, that but for the system of patents, this record now furnished would not have existed, and much of the knowledge gleaned by the patentees would have again dia. appeared, as the education of dogs and other lower animals disappears with the individual and is not left to the race. Even the process of pa- tenting does not thoroughly overcome the difficulty so long as the speci- fied records remain unpublished and are not carefully and constantly brought before public notice.

Patents are advantageous to the public, inasmuch as they stimulate in- dividual exertion to the discovery of new and useful things by the hope of individual gain. It is sometimes argued that this would be done better without the patent than with it. An illustration to the contrary may be adduced.

Some thirty years back, a Mr. Cutler invented and patented a peculiar kind of open fire-grate for apartments, which he called a "gas stove." It was not a gas stove in the modern sense of the word, but a stove in which the gas formed by the heating coal was consumed, instead of forming smoke by the simple method of depositing the coal in an iron box and lighting the fire on the top, raising the fuel as it burned down, by means of a winch, analogous to the process whereby candles are burned in spring lamps. There were several advantages in this stove independently of its power of consuming the smoke, and it was getting into extended use when the patentee brought an action against some rival manufacturers who were infringing his plans. The result was, that the patent was overthrown on the ground that Count Rumford or some one else had years before alluded to some such plan in a printed book. The patentee mortified and indignant, on his return home from the court caused all his patterns to be destroyed, and abandoned the manufacture, leaving it to his rivals and the public. In less than three years from that time the manufacture of the stoves had wholly ceased. The makers in competition with each other made them badly, and the public) was dis- gusted. After this long lapse of time, a benevolent man of science is try- ing to revive them under his own name, with some simplifying altera- tions; and probably the same result will obtain as with the non-patent Arnot's stoves, driven out of use by bad manufacture. Many similar in- stances might be adduced, showing the desirability of stimulating origina- tors by securing to them the reward of their originality.

We have now before us a result of the labours of the servants of the Commissioners in the printed specifications and lithographed drawings of two hundred and sixty-two patents for improvements in projectiles, fire- arms and their appurtenances, gunpowder, shells, rockets, pikes, bayonets, armour, &c. The list commences in the year 1718, in the reign of the First George, and ends in 1852, a period of one hundred and thirty-four years. Curiously enough, the first patent on the list is for a revolving breach gun or cannon, to contain several charges; and one of the last is the patent of Colonel Colt, for a similar object applied to hand guns and pistols. Strange to say, there are not wanting persons who would vitiate the claim of Colonel Colt to originality for his efficient weapon, because the quaint James Puckle devised an inefficient one a hundred and thirty years earlier. Colonel Colt's weapon is a rifle-barreled revolving detonator, self-acting, with a lever ramrod, occupying the minimum time in loading and discharging, and without need of wadding,—a practical implement of war. The weapon of James Puckle is that of a humorist, —a kind of demi-culverin on a tripod, to be planted like a telescope, and to be discharged by a linstock with one hand, while the revolving crank is worked by the other, and requiring to be primed for every separate dis- charge. The specification is partly in rhyme. A Defence.

"Defending King George your Country and Lewes,

Is defending yourselves and Protestant Cause,

For Bridges, Breaches, Lines, and Passes, Ships, Boats, Houses, and other Places."

Amongst others things, the drawing and letters of reference contain the following.

"Fig. 16. The plan of the chambers of the gun for a ship for shooting square bullets against Turks. "Fig. 17. For round bullets against Christians."

When the biography of inventors shall be published, we shall be curious to examine that of Mr. James Puckle. The style of the drawing and the use of the term " trepieds" give a strong suspicion that Mr. Puckle had received "a communication from a foreigner residing abroad." The pa- tent was contemporaneous with the South Sea Bubble.

In analyzing the subject matter of the two hundred and sixty-two pa- tents, we find that eighty-nine, ranging from 1775 to 1852, are specifically devoted to the various modes of discharging fire-arms by flint and deto- nation, leaving out of the question matchlocks and wheel locks. Under the head of fire-arms we have thirty-one inventions, from 1772 to 1852, in- * Specifications of Patents of Inventions relating to Fire-arms, Projectiles, &v. Printed by the Queen's Printers. chiding sundry adjuncts to fire-arms. For cannon and mortars, from 1728 to 1838, we have seven patents. There are five for machinery for boring and rifling from 1789 to 1852. Gun-carriages and wood ma- chinery, induding the patents of the late Sir Samuel Bentham, are seven- teen in number, ranging from 1753 to 1852. Shot and shells are eleven, from 1768 to 1852. The manufacture of gun-barrels and cannon is the subject of twenty-three patents, from 1798 to 1852. Breech-loading can- non and arms have occupied fourteen inventors, from 1741 to 1852. Re- volving or repeating fire-arms occupy nine patents, from 1718 to 1851. Air and steam guns are three in number, from 1824 to 1847. There is one patent for a long bow, and one other for an elastic string of caout- choue to propel arrows and darts. Pikes, bayonets, shields, and breast- plates, are six in number, from 1804 to 1846,.■ Shot-pouches, cartridge- boxes, and the appurtenances of warfare and the chace, occupy twenty- five patents, from 1777 to 1842 ; and gunpowder fuzes and rockets, twenty patents, from 1766 to 1852. There are about a hundred more patents for similar objects under the new law, to which we may take an early opportunity of referring. Amidst all this mass of matter are contained the chief improvements that have brought the science of projectiles to its present comparatively palmy condition ; and of course much rubbish is be found mingled with them, the results of puerile imaginations. To form a complete analysis of these specifications, and point out the important principles involved, and what portions are in conformity with the principles, would require considerable labour. Though much has been done, there is still much more remaining to do; and although we are only repeating a truism in sayinrthat the warlike skill and practical advance of Great Britain are equal to the rest of the world, yet there is no doubt that what remains to be unfolded in the use of nature's powers will yet throw into the shade all that now excites praise and wonder. Neither our great guns nor our small-arms are yet what they should be either as regards safety or efficiency; and it will only be when original minds can see the probability of recompense that they will betake themselves to the work of improvement in this branch. If we examine the structure of fire-arms, we find that the greatest improvements have been in weapons used by sportsmen ; for the simple reason that the general public was the patron. In weapons for war, the inventor could only depend upon Go- vernment officials, not individually interested in progress. The result has been, that national weapons have remained in an inferior condition ; and at last a Parliamentary inquiry has taken place, and propositions have been made to erect Government factories for the manufacture of weapons, to the exclusion of private factories.

It is a very certain thing, that no Government establishments can be so cheaply conducted as private factories ; but this would not signify pro- vided the result were a more efficient class of weapons. What a Govern- ment can do, is to enlist in its service the best talent for the production of samples, showing incessant improvement in construction, and thus guarding against the contingency of being over-supplied with obsolete weapons. We have professors of astronomy and other sciences; why should we not have professors of improved cannon, mortars, fire-arms, and projectiles, whose position would depend upon being ahead of their neighbours, by incessantly working at getting rid of the old by discover- ing the new ? To produce what is required needs a more varied know- ledge than the more art itself. To have our great guns what they should be, needs a considerable knowledge of the structure, properties, and qualities of metal, and of the machinery for preparing it, and also the capacity to create new varieties of machinery, to accomplish objects not yet attainable. Annual sums of money, of no amount nationally speak- ing, might be advantageously dispensed in enabling professors, not to en- joy a sinecure, but to keep up an incessant series of practical experi- ments, saving ultimate millions by the preliminary expenditure of hun- dreds. It is not by idleness that such men as Faraday maintain their positions ; and the practical part of science may have its Faradays as well as the scientific, were but the motives to obtain them held forth.

The philosophic brain is needed in gunnery, as well as the more practi- cal brain ; and the adaptation of parts to form a whole is the work of one 'who can generalize. There is as yet in the constructive part of warfare very little generalization. "When we reflect by what a very slow process the steam screw has been brought into use in opposition to the paddle, by what still slower process the paddle superseded the sail, and further reflect that a philosophic and practical-minded man, with a Government grant and the given problem placed before him, would have accomplished ius some two to three years all we have accomplished in two score, by putting in water a variety of' models, we may imagine what the public loses for want of officially-empowered originators. And when we look at a modern steamer with its huge power, and contemplate the variety of pur- poses to which that power could be turned by intelligence armed with authority, we grieve over the waste. We seek to create schools of design, forgetting that design means really origination, and that a school of de- sign in inventions fur national purposes is as much needed as schools for national patterns on paper or printed fabrics. It is only by individuals that originality can be accomplished ; and when a Government seeks to reward originators by granting patents, it should not be forgotten that patents are of little use in stimulating inventions for Government use. Out of the two hundred and sixty patents in the volume before us' two hundred belong to private purposes ; and about thirty years elapsed from Forsyth's first application of the percussion-powder to gun-locks, ere it become an ordinary appliance of the national army. The great value of the volume before us is as a stimulus to invention; but the higher minds Will not generalize upon it and extract its useful matter, and put it into new and more useful shapes, until the Government shall hold forth an inducement to them.

There needs much a completer exposition of the principles and system that should govern the mechanical arrangements for national defence in employing the powers of nature after the most useful fashion. A piece of field-artillery, as we at present behold it, is one of the most inartificial of modern contrivances—in fact, it is not modern at alL With the ex- ception of its size and better manufacture, it is in principle no advance en what was done by the Mahometan conquerors at the first siege of Con- stantinople. It is an exemplification of mere brute force in all its parts,

wheel, axle, carriage, cylinder, and linstocic. The men only, with their greatly-developed skill, are in advance, and their weapon is no longer worth?, of them. Compared to what field-artillery should be, it is "brown lieu' to the Minie rifle.

Meanwhile, we hail it as a sign of better times, that the Ordnance

department has called forth this volume from the Commissioners of Patents; and we trust that it will be largely circulated. If we are rightly informed, an appendix was in hand by the late Mr. Prosser, which we trust will yet be added to this collection. We should be glad if our words might be the means of turning the attention of Govern. ment to the fact, that not merely are the national weapons manufactured, in an inferior manner,—not merely are the muskets of the army the very opposite of what Colonel Colt seeks to attain, exactitude of parts, so thid all parts of one musket will fit all parts of another,—but the principle of construction is of an imperfect kind; and that the imper- fection of principle runs very largely through the whole range of pro- jectile weapons. Machinery and methods are very far in arrear of the possible ; and these defects must sooner or later be remedied in Govern- ment work-shops, in order to procure the samples whereby private indi- viduals may be enabled to execute Government contracts. If we do not bestir ourselves in this, other nations will outrun us. Paixhans can- non, Minie rifles, Kufahl needle guns, Colt's revolvers, are all the production of foreigners; and we arc yet far from having attained all the improvements of which projectiles are capable. Battles in many cases are won by surprises. It is recorded that the externally-fixed bayonet won a battle at its first use by surprising the opposing force with a dis- charge of bullets, not practicable with the ordinary mode of fixing the weapon. Effective revolving fire-arms give a sixfold advantage to the ordinary pistol; and although it is true that English hearts and courage cannot be permanently depressed by surprises, still a nation loses much of its prestige that borrows all its improved weapons from the stranger. The same motives being given, the qualities that have raised us to pre- eminence in steam-engines and textile machinery and machinery for working metals will raise us to equal prominence in weapons of war. Our English archers of yore could outmatch the world, and so should the bearers of our &docks yet to come, while our artillery casts projectiles to ranges yet unknown, with means of simple land transit for heavy gums, that can in any emergency convert the wilderness into a road of civiliza- tion and dispense with half the beasts of draught.

Our Blakes and Drakes and inwards of old swept the seas of foemen in our struggles for onward progress, with imperfect appliances. Our modern steam-moved fortresses, the giant coursers of the ocean, have yet attained but to their mid-growth. Steam, and the chemical agents that will possibly supersede it, have many more tasks to perform than have yet been assigned to them ; and for the structure of the vessels machinery is yet required, to change their construction from a state of comparative handicraftry to the unerring work of self-acting tools; and they have yet to be made unsinkable and incombustible,—two things quite within the reach of our existing art.

We need a department in our Government for works of progress in all things connected with war-mechanism, on which individual interest cannot otherwise be brought to bear. With such a department, a responsibility would exist, as the chief would be obliged to give an account of his stewardship without being able to shuffle the responsibility on other shoulders. The volume before us, with its description and drawings, should be furnished gratuitously to all mechanics' insti- tutes and reading-rooms, precisely as book-publishers are forced to con- tribute to the British Museum and similar establishments. If indivi- duals are taxed for the public welfare in the article of books, surely there can be no reason why the Commissioners of the Patent Office, after incurring the expense of composition and drawing, should not furnish extra copies, costing mere expense of paper, to public esta- blishments. We trust that the Commissioners of Patents will hold it a part of their duty to see that these new and valuable blue-books do not remain a dead letter, like other blue-books, at the printer's, but that they be really circulated for the public welfare. It should be well understood that the Patent Office is not maintained out of the taxes paid by the gene- ral public, but by the taxes levied on inventors in the shape of fees in ad- dition to the stamp-tax they pay. Therefore the public instruction com- municated by the free circulation of the published patents would in truth be a boon from the small body of inventors to the public.