April 1874

摘要

These days, lightweighting is all the rage, and superlatives are most often ascribed to miniaturisation; the smallest computers, the most power in the lightest battery. But this wasn't always the case: to our Victorian forebears, bigger was most definitely better. As a case in point, this report from Woolwich Dockyards makes interesting reading, as our predecessors seem open-mouthed in amazement at a colossal piece of firepower: an 81-ton gun, destined for one of the Royal Navy's new fleet of ironclads, HMS Inflexible. Ironclads were the spearhead of the arms race of the day: immense warships, housing heavily armoured 'citadels' in their centres and carrying the largest guns that could be made at the time.