The Gun Show

This is a story about four genuinely insane offshoots of what could be argued as one of the most significant inventions in the history of humanity: the gun. 

I'm not saying good, I'm not saying bad. I'm saying significant. 

That being said, this episode is about the world's largest double-barreled cannon, the first rapid-fire artillery with one glaring error, a questionably disguised triple pistol, and of course, a gun exclusively made for telling the time. 

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Transcript

1.       Whether you consider them a method of self-defence against an increasingly dangerous world, or one of the REASONS why the world is getting increasingly more dangerous, guns are a significant talking point in modern society. 

2.       The prevalence of guns in your day-to-day life may vary depending on where you live, but at the very least, they seem to be here to stay. They are engineered to be efficient, accurate, and lethal to the person they are aimed and fired at. 

3.       This was not always the case. To be clear, this is not a show about “guns are good vs. guns are bad”, this is a show about four different firearms from history:  

4.       the world’s largest double-barreled cannon, the first rapid-fire artillery with one glaring error, a questionably disguised triple pistol, and of course, a gun exclusively made for telling the time. 

5.       I’m Braden Thorvaldson, and this is What?! Explain. 

6.       We start our tale of frivolous firearms in 1862, in Athens Georgia, where John Gilleland, a dentist, builder, mechanic, and devout believer in the Confederate cause, began raising money to build a double-barreled chain-shot cannon. 

7.       This design originated from over 200 years before, where a Florentine gunsmith named Antonio Petrini cast the first cannon of this type. 

8.       The fact that the cannon had not been duplicated since did not faze Gilleland, (Gill-Lund) who collected $350 from like-minded Confederate townspeople (about $9800 US today) to have his design cast in one piece. 

9.       That meant there was no removing a part or replacing it. It was all one and done. Having had the cannon built, Gilleland (Gill-Lund) now needed to attract the attention of the Confederate army for them to put it to use. 

10.   He pitched the double-barreled cannon as an advancement of cannon warfare, where instead of loading two individual cannonballs, you loaded two of them connected to a chain.

11.    Fired simultaneously, the chain attached to the cannonballs would slice through the enemy soldiers. The Confederates were curious, but skeptical, so a test firing was arranged. 

12.   According to witnesses at the test firings, Gilleland (Gill-Lund) fired the cannon three times, managing to destroy a cornfield, a thicket of pine trees, and most impressively of all, a chimney and a cow in a nearby patch of grass. 

13.   Unfortunately for Gilleland (Gill-Lund), what he didn’t manage to do was hit the two upright poles that the Confederate generals set as his target. Gilleland (Gill-Lund) considered the firings a success, but nobody else in attendance did, including the people who would have been his buyers. 

14.   For the remainder of the Civil War, the Gilleland (Gill-Lund) Dual-Barrel cannon was shopped around to Confederate camps around Georgia, with no takers. Finally, he gave up, and donated the cannon to the town of Athens, Georgia, to be used as a signal gun for if the Union forces ever made it that far south. 

15.   Unfortunately, the ignominious (ig-no-mini-us) tale of the dual-barrel cannon doesn’t end there, because it couldn’t even work as a signal gun properly. On 27 July 1864, the cannon was fired after a report was heard of several thousand Union soldiers approaching nearby Monroe, Georgia. 

16.   However, this report turned out to be false, and the cannon was promptly retired again. You can still see the cannon to this day if you take a trip down to Athens, Georgia. 

17.   It stands on the lawn of City Hall, still pointing northwards, as if to retaliate against any union soldiers that might come its way after all these years. 

Ribaldequin

18.   Now we go back even further in time, to the fourteenth century. Gunpowder was now being used in warfare, and rudimentary long guns were slowly replacing bows and arrows as a favored distance weapon, as they could punch through pretty much any armor of the day.

19.    Cannons were also used in both field and siege battles at the time, but even the smallest cannons weighed hundreds of pounds and were, to say the least, not very mobile. 

20.   So, eventually someone had the brilliant idea to combine the mobility of the long gun with the devastating stopping power of a cannon, by… basically building twelve long guns attached to a wagon. 

21.   All the barrels were pointed in a vaguely fan-shape, which allowed them to be all lit at once from one spark. As a result, you would be able to fire off a volley of devastation with just one person. 

22.   These mobile gun batteries were called ribaldequins, but also generated many nicknames, including the infernal machine, or the organ gun, after its resemblance to a pipe organ when viewed from the side. 

23.   They could fire off more shots than a single long gun, were far lighter than a cannon, and required far fewer people to aim and fire them. 

24.   So why weren’t they used a lot more? Why aren’t the history books full of stories about wagons full of long guns all firing at once?

25.   Well, because of one rather large design issue: even with all of the barrels on the ribaldequin firing at once, you still needed to reload each of the guns one at a time. From the muzzle. In FRONT of the ammunition. Facing AWAY from the enemy. 

26.   Making it worse, this wasn’t even as simple as loading a ready-made bullet into a chamber. You needed to pour gunpowder, wadding, the shot, and make sure it was all tamped down. 

27.   Multiply that by however many barrels you had in your ribaldequin, and you may begin to have an idea as to why they weren’t used too much after the 16th century. 

28.   You can get stabbed, shot with arrows, or even shot with other long guns a LOT while hand-loading barrels of your artillery. Thus, the ribaldequin quietly faded into the annals of military history.

Henry the Eighth’s Morningstar Pistols

29.   Going a little bit further onto the eccentric side, we turn our attention to Henry the Eighth. 

30.   While primarily (and rightfully) known as an absolute maniac who started an entire other church in order to get an annulment, and executed every wife he had that didn’t sire him a male heir, or that didn’t tolerate his frequent affairs, another of his, shall we say, eccentricities were exotic weapons. 

31.   Some of these most exotic of weapons were three concealed matchlock pistols. But how would one be able to conceal three pistols at once? What sort of remarkably subtle ruse did the king have created for him for his own protection? 

32.   Well, in a spectacular misunderstanding of the idea of a disguised weapon, the three matchlock pistols were hidden in… an eight-foot-high Morningstar, which is basically an enormous spiked mace. For those keeping score at home, Henry the Eighth had three small weapons… hidden inside a massively big one. 

33.   But what would be the point of having such a weapon built if you weren’t going to have it with you at all times? Henry the eighth did in fact take his Morningstar with him when he went out into the city on walks for protection, because even he acknowledged that there were some people that may not think warmly of him, or the activities taken during his reign. 

34.   Little did he know that this Morningstar and his sense of divine-based invulnerability would get him into a tiny bit of trouble. 

35.   Henry was out one night taking his Morningstar for a walk when he was stopped by one of the city constables, who didn’t recognize him in the darkness and demanded to know what this person was doing brandishing a weapon at night. 

36.   Henry, who had in the recent past created his own church, annulled his marriage AND been excommunicated by the Pope, wasn’t accustomed to being questioned by anyone, let alone a mere constable.

37.    Henry proceeded to whack the guard with his gun-hiding Morningstar for his impertinence. The guard, likewise not accustomed to being whacked by a Morningstar by somebody wandering the very dark streets at night, arrested this seeming maniac, and tossed him in prison for the night. 

38.   When the sun rose that morning, the constable may have realized exactly who he threw in prison. Potentially after wishing his wife and children a tearful and final farewell, he released King Henry from behind bars and begged his forgiveness. 

39.   In an astonishingly mercurial fit of good humor, the King not only didn’t have the constable flogged, killed, or otherwise punished, he gave the man a commendation. 

40.   After retrieving his Morningstar-three-gun combo, the king walked back to the palace, and it is lost to history on whether the weapon was ever used again, either in battle or on a similarly impertinent guard.

Noon gun / Gundial

41.   Last but absolutely not least, is our most esoteric representative in the Gun Show: the Gundial. 

42.   Whereas the other three entries in this show were united in their intended purpose: To kill whomever the user needed to, and potentially anyone within a certain area around them, this entry was slightly different. This may be one of the only guns in the world to be exclusively used to tell time. 

43.   Better known as a noonday gun or a meridian cannon, and made in a wide variety of sizes, they all consisted of a sundial, a cannon, and a fuse lit by an overhanging lens. 

44.   The placement of the lens and dial was of paramount importance, because the lens was designed to be hung on a specific angle in order to light the fuse of the cannon with the concentrated suns rays. 

45.   Therefore, when properly oriented the sun’s rays were focused through the lens, lighting the fuse of the cannon so that it fired at noon. 

46.   Granted, the lens did have to be adjusted depending on the season, but by and large, the meridian cannon was considered a massive success, being in circulation for over 400 years, and located in places as different as European parks to the estates of the Sultan of Monaco. 

47.   “But Braden.” You might be asking. “Of all the possible ways to tell the time, why would anyone go with one that involved such a copious amount of gunpowder and finely shaped glass? Does that not seem like something of a recipe for disaster?”

48.   Well, I’m glad you asked. 

49.   For all intents and purposes, meridian cannons at their origin were bought by cities, royalty, or really, anyone who had both money to spare and a burning need to let anyone within a mile of the site know that it was noon. 

50.   Practically, it worked as an excellent “lunchtime” bell for people working on an estate, whether it be farming, ranching, or simply making the place look pretty. Many European parks used them to signal noon much in the same way as a clock tower would, minus the expense of actually building said clocktower. 

51.   As it turned out, a large cannon and similarly large lens were more affordable to build than a clocktower, so the cannons stayed in use for quite some time. 

52.   In fact, they were used far more recently than any of the other entries, with miniature toy versions of meridian cannons being sold as kits for assembly as late as 1979. Because apparently if you can’t trust a kid with a watch, at least give him a cannon. 

Conclusion

53.   The idea for this episode didn’t come from one particular ideological stance, but more my fascination with the sheer number of different attempts at improving upon, splintering off from, or simply just using the basic idea for a purpose entirely different than intended. 

54.   For each one of these, I had a specific visceral reaction of “WHAT?! Explain.”, which sort of brought me to this kind of compilation episode. 

55.   I suppose also one of the reasons I didn’t feel something of a mental twinge from this sort of episode is that all of these weapons weren’t successful as weapons of death. For all intents and purposes, they were rarely used, or when they were, not quite as intended. 

56.   I feel I’d be a little bit squeamish in glorifying the use of guns in general, as even without the sheer amount of violence related to it happening in the United States, it is absolutely not a thing I personally am in favor of. 

57.   And, on the topic of the title of this episode, The Gun Show, the beach is… *flex* THAT way. Ow. Oh god, that hurt me. Should not flex arm muscles that are rarely used. I’m Braden Thorvaldson, and I’ll talk to you all in another couple weeks! Oh god that hurt. 

58.   Theme music and Audio mixing for this episode was done by Craig Murdock, and script editing was done by Sara Smith, who tell me that probably starting with some gentle body weight exercises may be the way to de-atrophy my arms.  

59.   If you want to be up to date with all things podcast-related, why not follow us on Instagram at Whatexplaincast and on our Facebook page as What?! Explain. Podcast. 

60.   Don’t forget to subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and if you have some time, please rate and review us! 

61.   Word of mouth remains an excellent way to tell people about the show, so if you have a friend, family member, or double-barrelled cannon salesman in YOUR life that may be interested, please tell them about it!

62.   Thanks very much, and I’ll talk to you all later!