Note 118 — Chapter VIII · THE RIFLED GUN
Reading edition
A paragraph in Beaufoy’s Scloppetaria (1808) shows the complete misconception under which its author laboured as to the function of rifling. Just as the air turns a windmill or a shuttlecock (he says), so, after an indented ball quits its rifled barrel the air, forced spirally along its grooves, will cause the ball to turn. In short, he regarded the spiral grooves of a barrel as being of no further utility, with respect to the generating of the rotary motion, than as an easy way of giving the ball the requisite indentations.