A summary of the history, construction and effects in warfare of the projectile-throwing engines of the ancients, with a treatise on the structure, power and management of Turkish and other Oriental bows of mediæval and later times

Both these mechanicians give plans and dimensions with an accuracy that enables us to reconstruct the machines, if not with exactitude at any rate with sufficient correctness fo...

The mediæval catapult was usually fitted with an arm that had a hollow or cup at its upper end in which was placed the stone it projected, as shown above in fig. 5.[4] I find, h...

The trough has a strip of wood, in the form of a keel, fixed beneath it. This keel travels to or fro in a dove-tailed slot cut along the upper surface of the stock for the great...

This engine was of much more recent invention than the catapult or the balista of the Greeks and Romans. It is said to have been introduced into siege operations by the French i...

It is evident that a history of ancient siege engines cannot be created _de novo_. All that can be done is to quote with running criticism what has already been written about them.

(The arms of the Persian, Indian, and Chinese composite bows have a width of from 1½ to 2 in.; and though the span of these bows, when strung, is from 4 to 5 ft. and more, they...

The main part of the bow-string was composed of a skein of about sixty lengths of strong silk and was ingeniously knotted at each of its ends to a separate loop, formed of hard...

Shape of arrow, ‘barrelled,’ and much tapered from its balancing-point to its ends: its sharp ivory point being only ⅛ in. in diameter (where it is fitted to the shaft) and ¼ in...

In these days no person I have ever heard of can string a strong Turkish bow--diminutive as this weapon is--without much personal assistance, or else by mechanical means, yet fo...

This ingenious contrivance enabled the archer to draw the point of his arrow from 2 to 3 in. within the inner surface of his bent bow. He was thus able to shoot a short and ligh...

The Turk pulled his bow-string with a ring of ivory, or of other hard material, fitted on his right thumb. (Fig 9, p. 113.) Its manipulation is shown on p. 114.

In 1795 Mahmoud Effendi, Secretary to the Turkish Ambassador in London, shot a 25½-in. flight arrow 480 yards. The bow he used is similar to the one shown in fig. 11, p. 112, an...