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ViGiLO - Din l-Art Ħelwa
ISSUE 54 • NOVEMBER 2020
Ballistics is the study of the movement of projectiles. Galileo studied the principles of motion to derive the parabolic form of the ballistic trajectory. One of the members of the Academie Royale des Sciences, F. Blondel, wrote a book on the art of shooting bombs in 1683. In England Robert Anderson published the book Genuine Use and Effects of the Gunne in 1674. These two books became reference works. In 1684 Sir Isaac Newton published his treatise De motu (In motion) and in 1687 he published Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy). In two Memoires published in 1719 and 1721 in the Acta eruditorum, Bernoulli also gave mathematical solutions to the science of ballistics. Eulke Robins published New Principles of Gunnery in London in 1742 and Euler expanded on mathematical solutions of equations of motion within the framework of ballistic theory. In 1753 he wrote Memoires de Berlin published by the Berlin Academy of Sciences and his study was entitled ‘Recherches sur la veritable courbe que decrivent les corps jetes dans l’air on dans un autre fluide’. Thanks to the work of Robins and Euler, schools of artillery and military engineering could offer training to military engineers and the school of bombardiers started to teach in
a scientific manner. Complicated formulae took into consideration the resistance of the atmospheric medium, the velocity and acceleration of the initial motion and a ballistic coefficient. Ballistics was no longer an art but was developing into a science. In Malta the building which is today the Fortifications Information Centre close to St Andrew’s Bastions was used as an artillery school and the bastions were used to mount and shoot cannon. During the first half of the eighteenth century, bombardiers often referred to studies published by the French mathematician Bélidor, who experimented with gunpowder charges at the La Fère artillery school in the North of France. He claimed to have discovered that the charges used to fire a cannonball were too high and that the amount of gunpowder used was only making warfare more heavy and more expensive. Bélidor obtained permission from the court of France to conduct experiments using 24, 16, 12, 8 and 4-pounder cannons (the number referring to the weight of the cannon ball and not to the weight of the cannon). These experiments were conducted on 19 October 1739. He concluded that by reducing the charge, the range of the projectile would
Bottom left: Warship from a map by Matthaus Seutter c.1730. Bottom right: Foundry marked on one of the trunnions of the cannon at Wignacourt Tower, St Paul's Bay.
