The interesting point raised by yours is that it illustrates the US commitment primarily to iron post-AWI due in large part to the fact that at the time the US had a much greater supply of iron ore than copper or tin and "brass"/bronze cost 5-6 times more. As time went on, in the late 1830's there was an internal "war" in Ordnance that was resolved when the Board recommended bronze in early 1841 and Poinsett approved.
There are a pair of Hotchkiss revolving cannons in the lobby of the Bradford County Courthouse in Towanda Pennsylvania. If you google it, I'm almost certain there are photos of the guns. They really are impressive.This discussion of three pounders does beg the evolution leading to the Hotchkiss designed in 1875.
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Ideally suited to the highly mobile rough terrain of the Indian Wars, the Hotchkiss replaced muzzle loading artillery. For a history read more here.
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Hotchkiss Gun Story — Kaufman's Army Navy — Kaufman's Army & Navy
The Story of the U.S. Army Model 1875 Hotchkiss Mountain Gun. The U.S. Army purchased its first breech-loading cannon in 1877 from the arms manufacturer Hotchkiss & Company located in Paris, France. Designed in 1875, the quick firing Mountain Gun as Hotchkiss referred to it marked a major techwww.kaufmansarmynavy.nyc
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16 ounce shells were in accordance with prohibition on less than 14 ounce exploding ammunition fired at white people… the 19th Century, gotta love it.
Hotchkiss went on to invent a five barrel revolving 37 mm cannon. Unlike the Gatling gun, the single block Hotchkiss design was more robust. I was not satisfied with the links I found. This one provides the basics. Anyone who the a better one please post it. See more here.
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Hotchkiss Revolving Cannon: The Machine Gun Approaches | Doughboy Foundation
Benjamin Berkeley Hotchkiss was born in 1826 to a family [...]doughboy.org
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Today the 30mm automatic antiaircraft machine gun has been revived for a whole new type of warfare. Read more here.
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Gefart self-propelled anti-aircraft gun
Self-propelled anti-aircraft gun developed by West Germany inen.namu.wiki
I've always assumed that the discovery of more copper deposits and the ability to mine them played a role - as did growing dissatisfaction with cast iron. The irony (pun intended) is that advances in rifling and iron manufacture relatively quickly forced a switch back to iron guns - both cast iron (the Parrott tube, with the wrought iron breech wrap) and wrought iron (the 3" Ordnance tube) - so that after 1865 bronze was on its way to becoming a dead letter.I wonder if the choice of bronze coincided with the discovery of the vast copper deposit in Upper Michigan?
People had known about the Kennesaw deposit for 3,000 years. However, it wasn't exploited industrially until the 1830-40's.
Up until that point, like Roman times, copper came from Britain. The metallurgical deposit in the U.P. was like nothing the world had ever seen.
Makes me wonder if the availability of a ready supply of copper was a factor in choosing bronze guns?
Read more here.
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Getting a pair of them to display must have been a real score for Bradford County. If you're not familiar with Pennsylvania topography, Bradford County is a very rural, mountainous and poor county. Towanda itself isn't exactly the garden spot of the Western Hemisphere, either. There is a very impressive Civil War monument in front of the courthouse, too.
Minor nit - not quite "immediately", unless 1885 qualifies. Pretty quickly in relative terms, however.
Bringing the