CannonsCannons
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The first cannon was fired at arms length by a brave gunner hoping to hit something or anything as these cannons were far from accurate and difficult to aim. The range they carried was a poor 50 meters. Very early cannons were made using the same techniques already known for bell making, but when bigger cannons were needed the same technique didn't work and a new technique was devised.
At the siege of Odruik in 1377, a cannon firing 90kg stone balls was used by the Duke Burgundy. Later that same year he used a cannon firing 200kg balls. While this sort of weapons was excellent for siege purposes it was useless for lugging around the country side. Finally the idea came of instead of having a few siege cannons it would be better to arm soldiers with individual cannons that could be mounted on wooden stocks so as to point them anyway they wanted. The handgun was born. These smallarms consisted of a tube enclosed at one end were the explosion took place so as to eject the missile. The tube is called the barrel and the closed end is called the breech end and the open end is called the muzzle. The missile discharged from a cannon is known as a projectile.
