Muskets and Pendulums: Benjamin Robins, Leonhard Euler, and the Ballistics Revolution

Abstract

Ballistics was revolutionized between 1742 and 1753 by Benjamin Robins (1707-51) and Leonhard Euler (1707-83). As artillery officer wrote in 1789, Before Robins, who was in gunnery what the immortal Newton was in philosophy, the founder of system deduced from experiment and nature, the service of artillery was mere matter of chance, founded on no principles, or at best, but erroneous ones.' John Pringle, president of the Royal Society, put it more simply in 1783 by stating that Robins created new science.2 John Nef wrote in 1950 that Robins's work provides landmark in the interrelations between knowledge and war.3 Two engineers more recently described him as being one of the fathers of aerodynamics, while Thomas P. Hughes referred to him as a founder of modern gunnery.4 What did

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