3-008-437 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Manufacture of the Armstrong Gun at Woolwich Arsenal: coiling the bars, 1862. An Armstrong gun was a uniquely designed type of rifled breech-loading field and heavy gun designed by Sir William Armstrong and manufactured in England beginning in 1855 by the Elswick Ordnance Company and the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich, south-east London. Such guns involved a built-up gun construction system of a wrought-iron (later of mild steel) tube surrounded by a number of wrought-iron strengthening coils shrunk over the inner tube to keep it under compression. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.