Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 July 1898 — LOOKING INTO A CANNON [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

LOOKING INTO A CANNON

View Through the Muzzle of a 13 Inch Gnu Which Is Forty Feet Long. Did you ever look into the muzzle of a seventy-two-ton cannon? If not, here is your opportunity. Of course, the picture here shown can give no

definite realization of the wonder and terror that come over you when you thrust your face into the gaping mouth of one of these steel monsters and look through it a distance of forty feet to the open breech. You can get a fair idea of the damage such a big gun can wreak, although you can’t begin to imagine the shock and heat and noise which the discharge of such a gun creates. This cannon has a recoiling force of 225 tons. The projectile leaves it with a velocity of 2,100 feet per second or 1,400 miles per hour. The force imparted to the projectile or cartridge, if properly applied, would life a battleship bodily three feet in the air, and yet this great machine of death and destruction, weighing 145,000 pounds, is as accurate as a high-grade watch.

VIEW FROM MUZZLE TO BREECH.