Book Description

Excerpt from A Historical Sketch of the Experimental Determination of the Resistance of the Air to the Motion of Projectiles The Royal Society awarded their Copley Medal to Robins in 1746. His experiments and theories are said to have met with the greatest approbation from the best judges at home. His work was translated by Euler into High Dutch, 1745, and by Le Roy into French, 1751. He was appointed engineer-general to the East India Company, 1749, for which he was to receive 500 a year for life, provided he gave his services for five years in India. Two years after Hutton arrived at Woolwich, 1775, he "in "conjunction with some able officers of the Royal Regiment of "Artillery, and other ingenious gentlemen, first instituted a course "of experiments on fired gunpowder and cannon balls" for government. His "account of them was presented to the Royal "Society, who honoured it with the gift of the annual gold medal, "and printed it in the Philosophical Transactions for the year "1778." Hutton remarks "That part of Mr Robins's book has always "been much admired, which relates to the experimental method "of ascertaining the actual velocities of shot, and in imitation of "which, but on a large scale, those experiments were made which "were described in my paper." The projectiles used by Hutton varied from one to near three pounds in weight, afterwards increased to six pounds. Further experiments were carried on from 1783 to 1791, and the results obtained were considered satisfactory. Hutton at first made use of a pendulum weighing about 600 lbs. It was increased to 1014 lbs. in 1788, afterwards to 1633 lbs., and at last to 2099 lbs. Hutton's health began to fail in 1806, and when he retired the Board of Ordnance manifested their approbation of his long and meritorious services by granting him a pension for life of 500 per annum. Gregory made some experiments at Woolwich in 1815-18 with a ballistic pendulum weighing 7046 lbs. chiefly on the effect of windage. The first experiments made with the ballistic pendulum at Metz were carried out during 1839, 1840. The weights of the projectiles were about 9, 13, 26 and 51 lbs. The weight of the pendulum was 13,228 lbs. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."