MYSTERY OBJECTS

[Stanley]

That's a good start! I think we need a bit more than that.

[Stanley]

Hello!??? Anyone out there?

[plaques]

Trying my best but I think I'm miles off. Is it a land / ship based torpedo launcher?

[Gloria]

Looks ancient and very ornate.

[Stanley]

Clues are needed. Land based super cannon, cast in the 15th century and still in active service in the 19th century.

[Big Kev]

Used by the Ottoman empire during the fall of Constantinople.

When the army assembled at the city walls of Constantinople on 2 April 1453 CE, the Byzantines got their first glimpse of Mehmed's cannons. The largest was 9 metres long with a gaping mouth one metre across. Already tested, it could fire a ball weighing 500 kilos over 1.5 km. So mammoth was this cannon that it took an awfully long time to load and cool it so that it could only be fired seven times a day.

[Stanley]

You've got there Kev. See this LINK. pretty impressive that 350 years after it was first cast they used it again effectively against the Royal Navy!

Next one?

[Tripps]

How on earth did they cast such a monster in the 15th Century? Several hundred years before th 'industrial revolution'.

[Stanley]

A good question David and one that has always puzzled researchers because the 'Advanced West' can't accept that Muslims were better engineers than them. It even had a screw thread in the centre so it could be made with the weight of metal they could handle in one melt. Another puzzle is that because of transport difficulties, say in the case of a siege, the gun-founders cast them on site where they were needed!
The only good reference I have ever found is in 'The Gun Founders of England' by Charles ffoulkes a very rare book written in 1937. [I found a library first edition hardback David (LINK. Could look good on your Zoom backdrop!]
It mentions one melt as weighing 37 tons, far bigger that anything the West could do in the 15th century. Isn't it strange how we always start by assuming we are better at anything like this than anyone East of us....

[Tizer]

It's a bit like there being only a few foundries in the world now that can do the biggest nuclear reactor core vessels. There's lots of information here.... LINK

[Stanley]

Good link Peter. Forgings rather than castings but still pertinent. This para got my attention, another little mistake Cameron and Osborne made in their 'money-saving' ploy of austerity.
"The UK's Sheffield Forgemasters International, founded in the 1750s and subject to a management buyout in 2005, is the only UK company with ASME N-stamp accreditation. It has a 10,000 tonne press which takes 300 tonne ingots, and had finalised £170 million financing to install a 15,000 tonne forging press to handle 500 tonne ingots. After long negotiation, the UK government agreed to lend £80 million, Westinghouse offered about £50 million in advance payments, and the last £20 million came from bank loans. The press was expected to be commissioned in 2013, and would have enabled the company to manufacture all heavy components for EPR and AP1000 reactors, but the new UK government in June 2010 cancelled the loan arrangement and the prospect is now uncertain. In February 2016 the company said that while it could not produce ultra large forgings for the EPR, it could “produce 80% of forgings for projects like Hinkley Point C, including large forgings for the steam generator, reactor and pressuriser assemblies.”"

[Stanley]

What can you tell me about this. what, when and where?

[Gloria]

No idea, but an interesting photo.

[Big Kev]

Oxen? Is it somewhere in Europe?

[Stanley]

Isn't it Gloria!
The happening was in Europe Kev.

[Gloria]

Eastern European?

[Gloria]

Are those tunnels we can see? For mining perhaps? Are the oxen pulling piles of railway lines for use in the mines? Looks like they are being pulled over rollers.

[plaques]

A 30 ox power Pickford's low loader pulling a big diesel engine to a mining firm.

[Big Kev]

A 30 ox power Pickford's low loader pulling a big diesel engine to a mining firm.

[Big Kev]

They look to be wooden boxes, or one big wooden box...

[Tizer]

Does the box contain a boiler being delivered?

[Stanley]

Sorry, none of you is anywhere near. (Inventive but not accurate) Clue it was in Italy. (I'm enjoying this one.... )

[Wendyf]

I'm wondering if the dark shape on the right of the photo is a boat. It's hard to tell if it is concave or convex if you see what I mean. As there is what appears to be a ladder against it I'm going for a boat out of the water, so is the load being taken to the sea?

[Tizer]

Carting quarried marble from the Carrera marble quarries in Italy?

[Gloria]

Carting quarried marble from the Carrera marble quarries in Italy?

Ooh I like that answer.