Note 83 — Chapter IV · “NEW PRINCIPLES OF GUNNERY”

How strange and almost incredible this phenomenon appeared to people long after Robins’ time, may be seen from the manner in which Ezekiel Baker, one of the principal London gunmakers and the contractor who supplied the rifles with which the Rifle Brigade was equipped in the year 1800, poured gentle sarcasm on the account of this experiment. In his book on Rifle Guns, published in 1825, he can only assign the cause of the deflection to “some peculiar enchantment in the air.” “Or,” he continues, “with all my practice I have yet much to learn in guns, and the effects of powder and wind upon the ball in its flight.”