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Abstract
The engineering skills taught at the West Point military academy in the mid-nineteenth century left officers of the US Army’s scientific corps ill-prepared for the research they would undertake when assigned to design large cast-iron cannon and control of floods on the Mississippi River. They succeeded where close observation and qualitative reasoning sufficed; had difficulty where the necessary principles in mechanics, hydrology and geology were not yet in textbooks; and lacked adequate means of testing their designs. Massive amounts of partially analysed data in their reports obscured critical omissions. The river research led to flood control with a levees-only scheme that proved difficult to revise even after disastrous floods. The iron research delayed adoption of steel artillery. A few 20-inch bore cannon were successfully cast for coast defence but could neither be loaded nor trained rapidly enough to be useful weapons.
I thank my colleagues Carolyn Cooper, Patrick Malone and Michael Raber for helpful discussions on the work of the army scientific corps.
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Robert B Gordon
Robert Gordon taught metallurgy at Columbia and Yale Universities before joining the Geology and Geophysics department at Yale. There he developed courses in engineering and surficial geology while doing research on the properties of materials at high pressure, on mineral physics, and life-cycle analyses of metal resources. His long-standing interest in the history of technology led him to teaching and research in archaeometallurgy and the development manufacturing technology for firearms. His books include American Iron, 1607–1900, A Landscape Transformed, The Texture of Industry (with Patrick Malone) and Forge of Innovation (with Michael Raber, Patrick Malone and Carolyn Cooper).
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