Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)/Armstrong, William George, Lord

ARMSTRONG, WILLIAM GEORGE, LORD, an English inventor, born in 1810 at Newcastle. He was articled to a solicitor, and became a partner in the firm. In 1840 he produced a much improved hydraulic engine, and in 1845 the hydraulic crane. In 1842 he brought to perfection an apparatus for producing electricity from steam. He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1846; and shortly afterward commenced the Elswick Engine Works, Newcastle, producing hydraulic cranes, engines, accumulators, and bridges, but was soon to be famous for the production of ordnance. During the Crimean War, Armstrong was employed by the War Office to make explosive apparatus for blowing up the ships sunk at Sebastopol. This led him to devise the form of cannon which bears his name. The essential feature of the Armstrong gun, whether rifled or smooth bore, breech-loading or muzzle-loading, is that the barrel is built up of successive coils of wrought-iron, welded round a mandrel into a homogeneous mass of great tenacity, the breech being especially strengthened on similar principles. The actual results obtained by these guns, even of the earlier patterns, were almost incredible. An ordinary 32-pounder weighed 5,700 pounds. Armstrong's 32- pounder weighed 2,600 pounds. The former required 10 pounds of powder as a charge; for the latter 5 pounds sufficed. The former would send a shot or shell 3,000 yards; the range of the latter exceeded 9,000 yards. Armstrong offered to the government all his inventions; and, till 1863, there existed a kind of partnership between the government and the Elswick firm, Armstrong being knighted in 1858, and appointed chief-engineer of rifled ordnance. Already a member of many scientific societies, he was in 1863 President of the British Association. Cambridge and Oxford conferred honorary degrees on Armstrong, who was raised to the peerage as Baron Armstrong in 1887. He died Dec. 27, 1900.

Source: Collier's New Encyclopedia 1. (1921) New York: P.F. Collier & Son Company. 266.