At the latest in the Yuan Dynasty, China had made the oldest firearms. The bronze gun cast in the third year of Yuan Dynasty (1332) exhibited in the China History Museum weighs 6.94 kg, is 35.3 cm long, and has a muzzle diameter of 105 mm. The gun body has inscriptions such as "Ji Risui recovered the No.300 Mashan of Koujun in February of Shunzhi three years". There are two square holes in the tail of the gun for mounting the trunnion. The Ming Dynasty government in China set up two bureaus of "Military Operation" and "Military Operation" to make firearms respectively. During the period from Zheng De to Jiajing (1506 ~ 1566), there were dozens of kinds of artillery. "Tiger Squatting Gun" uses iron claws to limit recoil. When shooting, the recoil is less than five inches, which can hold more than 100 small lead bullets. The "attacking Rong cannon" is mounted on the car to launch, which is convenient for mules and horses to drag, and the recoil is limited by iron anchors. The "Invincible General Gun" weighs 1000 kg, and the car can hold 500 irons, with a width of more than 20 feet. "Poisonous fire flying cannon" and "flying blasting cannon" can launch explosive bombs. This kind of cannonball is an iron casting hollow body, which is filled with gunpowder and other drugs, and is equipped with a fuse, and the medicine thread is put into a bamboo tube. When launching, the projectile is loaded into the barrel, the fuse is ignited first, and then the propellant in the barrel is ignited, and the projectile 9 explodes after reaching the target.
After China's gunpowder and firearms spread to the west, artillery began to develop in Europe. /kloc-in the first half of the 0/4th century, Europe began to manufacture artillery that fired stone bullets. /kloc-in the first half of the 6th century, Italian n tartaglia discovered the law of the maximum range of artillery shells when they were fired at a 45-degree angle in vacuum, which laid a foundation for the theoretical research of artillery science. /kloc-in the mid-belly period of 0/6, there were bronze long-barrel guns with smaller caliber and long-barrel guns forged with wrought iron in Europe, which replaced the previous mortars (large-caliber short-barrel guns). The front car is also used to facilitate quick action through ups and downs. At the end of 16, there appeared a shotgun made of bullets or metal fragments in an iron cylinder, which was used to kill people. 1600 or so, some countries began to use drug-coated propellant, which improved the firing rate and shooting accuracy. 17th century, Galileo's ballistic parabola theory and Newton's research on air resistance promoted the development of artillery. During the reign of King Gustav II of Sweden (161~1632), the method of weight reduction and standardization was adopted to improve the mobility of artillery. 1697, Europe replaced the bulk gunpowder in the ignition hole with a tube filled with gunpowder, which simplified the aiming and filling process. /kloc-at the end of 0/7, howitzers were used in most European countries.
/kloc-in the middle of 0/8th century, King Friedrich II of Prussia and J.B., director of French artillery. V Gribo has been committed to improving the maneuverability and promoting the standardization of artillery. After many tests, Britain, France and other countries unified the caliber of the gun, making the metal weight ratio of each part of the gun more suitable; There is also a ballistic pendulum to measure the initial velocity of the projectile. /kloc-at the beginning of the 9th century, shrapnel was used in Britain, which exploded in time by blowing fuse, thus improving the power of artillery.
From the appearance of artillery to the mid-Kloc-0/9th century, artillery usually loaded guns in front of the sliding chamber and fired solid spherical shells, and some artillery fired spherical explosive shells, shotguns and shotguns. The original rifled gun was a straight rifled gun, the main purpose of which was to facilitate the front loading of projectiles. This kind of gun has slow firing speed, low firing accuracy and short range. In order to increase the range of artillery, at the beginning of 19, European countries carried out experiments on line-bore guns. 1846, Italian major G. cavalli made a spiral rifled gun, which fired a long explosive bomb with a conical nose column. The spiral rifling makes the projectile rotate and fly stably, which improves the power and shooting accuracy of the gun and increases the range of the gun. At the same time, the rifle bolt was improved and reloaded, and the firing rate was obviously improved.
The adoption of rifled gun is a major change in gun structure. Up to now, rifled gun bodies have been widely and effectively used. Smoothing guns are mortars, etc.
/kloc-the invention of anti-recoil device before the end of 0/9, the gun body is connected with the gun frame through the trunnion, and the gun frame of this gun is called rigid gun frame. When the gun is launched, the rigid gun mount is stressed heavily, the gun body is bulky, the maneuverability is poor, the aiming is destroyed when launching, and the launching speed is slow, which limits the improvement of power. Anti-recoil device appeared at the end of19th century, and the gun body was connected with the gun frame through it. The gun rack of this kind of gun is called elastic gun rack. 1897, France made a 75mm field gun with anti-recoil device (hydraulic pneumatic recoil), and other countries followed suit. When the gun with elastic gun frame is fired, the force acting on the gun frame is greatly reduced due to the buffer of recoil device, which reduces the weight of the gun, and the gun does not shift during firing, which improves the firing speed. The adoption of elastic gun mount has eased the contradiction between increasing the power and improving the maneuverability of artillery, and the structure of artillery tends to be perfect, which is a major breakthrough in the history of artillery development.