Background
Benjamin Robins was born in 1707 at Bath, England. Benjamin Robins' parents were John Robins (1666-1758) and Sarah Broughton. John and Sarah were Quakers and they married in 1700.
Benjamin Robins (1707 – 29 July 1751) was a pioneering English scientist, Newtonian mathematician, and military engineer.
1727 - 1751
Royal Society, London, England, United Kingdom
Robins was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1727.
1742
Principles of Gunnery by Benjamin Robins.
1747
For his service, Robins was awarded the Copley Medal.
Royal Society, London, England, United Kingdom
Robins was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1727.
https://www.amazon.com/New-Principles-Gunnery-Determination-Investigation/dp/1165046075/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?keywords=New+Principles+of+Gunnery%3A+Containing+the+Determination+of+the+Force+of+Gunpowder%2C+and+an+Investigation+of+the+Difference+in+the+Resisting+Power+of+the+Air+to+Swift+and+Slow+Motions.+With+Several+Other+Tracts+on+the+Improvement+of+Practical+Gunnery&qid=1576501664&s=books&sr=1-1-fkmr1
1805
(A ballistic pendulum is a device for measuring a bullet's...)
A ballistic pendulum is a device for measuring a bullet's momentum, from which it is possible to calculate the velocity and kinetic energy. Ballistic pendulums have been largely rendered obsolete by modern chronographs, which allow direct measurement of the projectile velocity.
1742
(Benjamin Robins was the first to employ a whirling arm. H...)
Benjamin Robins was the first to employ a whirling arm. His first machine had an arm 4 feet long. Spun by a falling weight acting on a pulley and spindle arrangement, the arm tip reached velocities of only a few feet per second.
1746
engineer mathematician scientist
Benjamin Robins was born in 1707 at Bath, England. Benjamin Robins' parents were John Robins (1666-1758) and Sarah Broughton. John and Sarah were Quakers and they married in 1700.
Robins's family lived in poor circumstances, and as a result, he received very little formal education. In London, he was taught by Doctor Henry Pemberton, who, at the time, was preparing the third edition of Newton's Principia for publication. Pemberton soon had Robins reading, in English translations, the classic Greek texts on geometry by Apollonius, Archimedes and by Pappus. Robins loved this geometrical approach to mathematics and retained a preference for geometry over algebra or analysis throughout his life.
In addition to the Greek texts, he read works by Fermat, Huygens, de Witt, Sluze, James Gregory, Barrow, Newton, Taylor, and Cotes. He progressed quickly, publishing in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1727, the year he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. This paper gave a proof of a result by Isaac Newton on quadratures. He then wrote on Johann Bernoulli's laws of motion and the impacts of rigid bodies, refuting Johann Bernoulli's theory of elastic collisions in The Present State of the Republic of Letters in 1728. With this work, he achieved considerable fame so that he was able to attract many pupils for mathematics tuition.
Trained as a teacher, Robins soon left that profession for mathematics and for ballistics and fortifications. He went on to construct bridges, mills, and harbours. He also worked at making rivers navigable and draining fenland. In 1727 he published an article in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, a demonstration of the eleventh proposition of Newton’s Treatise on Quadratures.
Robins invented the ballistic pendulum which allowed precise measurements of the velocity of projectiles fired from guns. As described by Robins, a large wooden block is suspended in front of a gun. When a bullet is fired its momentum is transferred to the bob and can be determined from the amplitude of the pendulum's swing.
In 1746 he published Of the resistance of the air; together with the method of computing the motions of bodies projected in that medium. He continued his study of the resistance of air, examining not only spheres moving through the air bur also other shapes such as pyramids. He published results of experiments he carried out in 1746 in the following year in the paper An account of experiments relating to the resistance of the air, exhibited at different times before the Royal Society, in the year 1746. In 1747 Robins received the Copley medal of the Royal Society to recognise his achievement in developing the new science of ballistics.
In his papers Robins often mixed science with a political message. For example in Of the force of fired gunpowder, together with the computation of the velocities thereby communicated to military projectiles (1747) he was critical of military research, while in A Proposal for Increasing the Strength of the British Navy (1747) he suggested that the navy adopt a new gun based on his own design. He experimented with rockets, publishing Rockets and the heights to which they ascend in 1750. He also improved the instruments at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. Robins was appointed engineer general for the British East India Company in 1749 sent to India in the following year.
Robins’ best-known work, New Principles of Gunnery, appeared in 1742. Euler translated it into German in 1745, adding his own commentary. It was also translated into French in 1751. It was there that Robins described the ballistic pendulum. His other work on ballistics was far from trivial, including studies of the resistance of fluid media to high-speed objects, pressures on projectiles inside a gun barrel, the rilling of barrel pieces, and the shape of actual, as opposed to ideal, trajectories. His last work consisted of investigations of rockets for the purpose of military signaling.
Robins' major achievement that he is remembered for was in his invention of the ballistic pendulum which allowed precise measurements of the velocity of projectiles fired from guns. His invention enabled gunners for the first time to measure with considerable exactness the muzzle velocities of projectiles delivered by their pieces.
Also, Robins laid the groundwork for modern ordnance (field-artillery) theory and practice with his New Principles of Gunnery (1742), which invalidated old suppositions about the nature and action of gunpowder and the flight of projectiles and formed the basis of all later scientific studies in these fields.
Robins' most important work on ballistics was published in 1742, as a short book entitled "The New Principles Of Gunnery". A later edition, published in 1805 includes "several other tracts on the improvement of practical gunnery" that Robins presented at the Royal Society. For his service, he was awarded the Copley Medal in 1747.
Robins was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1727.
Though Robins professed in teaching mathematics only, he would, however, sometimes assist particular friends in other parts of knowledge for he was well qualified to point out the real beauties of writers in all sorts of learning, and also the excellencies in the performances of great artists, as his taste and judgement were not limited to a single subject alone, but extended equally to history, oratory, poetry, music, architecture, sculpture, painting, and works of genius and invention of every kind.
Robin remained a bachelor and stayed single for the rest of his life.
1666-1758
Lord Anson, who was a friend and patron of Robins, after returning from the voyage around the world in the Centurion, appears to have entrusted to Robins for revision the account of the voyage which had been compiled from the journals by his chaplain, Richard Walter.
