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| In lecture at New College Institute |
Dr. Mervyn King, shown with a model of a Civil War-era cannon, lectures on weaponry at the New College Institute on Wednesday. (Bulletin photo) |
Thursday, May 14, 2009
By AMANDA BUCK - Bulletin Staff Writer
From a 15th-century matchlock to a 19th-century six-shooter, the weapons of centuries past were on display Wednesday as Dr. Mervyn King presented a lecture on the history of weaponry at the New College Institute.
King, a retired anesthesiologist and avid collector, shared pieces from his collection of weaponry and discussed the history of gunpowder and guns during the talk, which was part of NCI’s noncredit lecture series. About 10 people attended the presentation.
From the Roman Empire onward, the evolution of weaponry illustrates the saying, “Necessity is the mother of invention,” King said.
“You’ll see that time and time again,” he said.
King’s review of weaponry began with a discussion of knights, who typically wore 60 pounds of armor and traveled on horseback. Knights were hard to combat without sophisticated weapons, he said.
“Unless you could shoot an arrow and go through the sight hole of a knight, he was pretty hard to stop,” King said.
Slings and catapults were among the weapons evolving in that era, King said. Early catapults could toss 300 to 400 pounds of rock about 300 yards, or a 25- to 50-pound missile about a half mile, “but you don’t have a whole lot of accuracy,” he said.
The catapults were large and unwieldy, and they took time to move.
“There were some advantages,” but catapults couldn’t be used for just anything, King said.
Another early weapon called Greek fire was a mixture of chemicals that could be thrown onto wooden forts or ships.
“If you could shoot it on a gate, it wouldn’t go out,” King said. “Water wouldn’t stop it.”
But Greek fire didn’t explode the way gunpowder does, he said.
It is generally thought that gunpowder was invented in 1250 by a German monk named Berthold Schwarz, but King said his research has shown that no birth or death records exist for Schwarz.
By 1260, a man named Roger Bacon had invented a formula for gunpowder that used sulfur, potassium nitrate and carbon, King said. It wasn’t terribly powerful.
“Today, it wouldn’t hardly make a poof in the fire market,” he said.
Bacon “felt humanity had enough devices to kill each other already,” so he wrote the formula in a code to keep it from being widely used, King said. The code wasn’t cracked until the 18th century, King said. By then, others had developed gunpowder.
Early gunpowder makers used mortars and pestles to grind mixtures and create the powder. They soon began putting rocks and powder in mortars that were used in attacks.
Those weapons, called thunder buckets, didn’t cause much damage, King said, but their psychological effects were great because superstition led people to associate explosions with evil forces.
With an explosive, “The devil’s right there on the wall; man, he was at you,” King said.
In the early 14th century, long-barrel cannons were invented, and by the late 1300s or early 1400s, portable cannons that could be held individually were gaining use. The weapons were lit with a wick called a slow match, which was a cord soaked in potassium nitrate that would burn very slowly, King said.
Those weapons were an improvement, but they were difficult to fire, and the smoke and glow from the wicks tipped enemies off to an army’s location, he said.
By the mid-1400s, matchlocks, which could be held and fired by a single person, were invented. King displayed one from his collection that includes an ax head at one end and a knife that slides out of the handle.
“That’s a multi-purpose tool,” King said.
Over time, as gunpowder became easier to transport and use, weapons developed accordingly. Whereas some early guns had to be cleaned after only eight or 10 shots, later versions could fire 20 to 25 shots before a cleaning became necessary.
Guns took a step forward around 1500, when Leonardo da Vinci invented a wheel lock rifle. King displayed one that dates to about 1580. A wheel and flint were used to create a spark that lit the gunpowder, eliminating the need for the slow match.
However, the rifles, some of which contained 50 separate parts, were difficult and expensive to make, King said.
By the time of the American Revolution, soldiers were using flintlock guns. The French gave flintlocks to George Washington, whose soldiers used them to fight the British.
King displayed a flintlock musket that was marked as property of Washington’s army.
“These were the guns that helped us win the war,” he said.
He also shared two “very fancy guns” from his collection, both of them 19th-century pieces.
The first has a solid brass barrel, a German silver box and is engraved with hearts and other designs. It dates to the 1840s, he said.
The second, a six-shooter Colt single-action pistol, was made about 1880. King displayed it with a leather gun belt from the period. The belt’s silver buckle is decorated with red stones, and the belt was hand-tooled, King said.
“Guns have function, but they can be works of art,” he said, “as much as a painting or a sculpture.” |
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