History of guns

In the history of guns, if we define a gun as "a tube through which a projectile is fired," then the ancient blow gun, of the type still used by native peoples in the Amazon River basin, would qualify. In this section of In History website, we explore the history of guns.

History of blow guns

In 245 BC, the Greek engineer Ctesibius  devised a compressed air blow gun, which consisted of a bronze tube fitted with a piston that could fire arrows. In 1040, gunpowder was invented in China and was used in fireworks and as an industrial explosive. Gunpowder was first used to launch projectiles from a portable gun the size of a modern rifle in Arabia in 1304.

Large guns (artillery), as opposed to small arms (rifles, pistols, etc.), include cannons, howitzers and mortars. Chinese cannons first appeared in the thirteenth century. The Chinese also are known to have used them in the defeat of a Mongol fleet off the coast of Japan in 1281.

Naval cannons and howitzer in history

Naval cannons were used on European ships in 1346. They were designed to fire in as straight a trajectory as possible at a visible target. The howitzer was developed in the seventeenth century in the English and Dutch armies, and is used to fire explosive shells in a high arc to hit a distant target, often one that is out of the line of sight.

History of the mortar

The mortar is an extrapolation of the howitzer idea that evolved in its present form during World War I. A mortar fires its projectile in a very steep trajectory so that when it reaches the target it has actually fallen from a very great height and hence has added velocity from its fall.

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