XPost: rec.arts.comics.strips   
   From: sjharker@aussiebroadband.com.au   
      
   Thomas Koenig  writes:   
      
   > Scott Dorsey  schrieb:   
   >> Paul S Person   wrote:   
   >>>I appear to be projecting much more modern concepts of artillery onto   
   >>>the distant past.   
   >>>   
   >>>Ancient geometry did include conic sections, although whether they   
   >>>were related to the path of missiles used in indirect fire [1] I do   
   >>>not know.=20   
   >>   
   >> I don't know, but Galileo does talk about how the projectile follows a   
   >> parabola and why.  He does mention indrect fire although I don't think   
   >> it is very useful unless you have good spotting, which would have been   
   >> a problem at the time.   
   >   
   > If you are firing over a wall into a fortress or a city, it is   
   > not that much of a problem.   
      
   By the Napoleonic wars Howitzers were widely used against opposition   
   troops in battle as well as in sieges.  Common shell had a fuse, but   
   probably was not very accurate in timing.  The British Henry Shrapnel   
   developed  spherical `case-sshot' or  the original `Shrapnel shell'   
   which seemed to have been used with more careful trimming of the   
   fuse. [Philip Hawthornthwaite; The Armies of Wellington, chapter 8]   
      
   --   
   Stephen Harker                       sjharker@aussiebroadband.com.au   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)