The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, January 14, 1900, Page 6

THE SUNDAY CALL. f self-defense 5 d its most per- ew fortifications of San k nothing but com mdke them the equal passing 1t e present batferies are placed ot of these guns which con- nelseo’s princplal sea coast ? scenery more e who is used to f the eastern three great dyna- of the Presidio s a long line of modern cannon, placed e s such compli- ngines can be hing down to where he old Dbrick fort hinge on the southerly > Golden Gate. Nearly a mile - hant, like panthers, resting . estals and are ready at a 1o : s into the air. They nd discharge their back into conceal- safety by the gun- then fiy aded in ment to be re ners In the very brow of the cliff and at the head of the long line of guns are those wonderful machines which are the me- chanical eyes and brains of the crouch- ing monsters below. The range finders are the latest addition of science to the wisdom of machinery. Eyes they have that sweep the sea with a keenness out- rivaling that of the eagle. A massive mechanical brain they have that works logarithms with the turn of a wheel and does spherical trigonometry with & lever and ratchet that merely clicks a few times and tells you the declination and right ascension proper for the gun in order to hit the ship on which the glassy eye of the monster is fixed. Three tons is the welght of this silent and industrious cal- culator. It is mounted on a heavy con- crete base three fect in diameter and con- sists of a giant theodolite, the telescope of which s directed toward and kept fixed upon the vessel whose position it is de- sired to note. Attached to the telescope, and moving not in unison but in syn- chronism with it, 1s a duplex panto- grapbic arrangement of levers which indi- General Shafter Discusses the HNew Fortifications No seaport of the United tdtes is more strongly de- fended than San Francisco is at the present moment, and yet the work is ing om. At the new battery which will shoot over Su- tro’s Baths and grounds we are preparing to mount more of the disappearing guns, with their own range-find- ers; and on the cliffs be the three dynamite guns cencrete foundations are be- w ing laid for the first of a se- ries that will constitute a water baiter: The old fort at the Point may be removed and a pow- erful water battery placed there. Rapid-fire guns will be mounted on Lime Point, below and to the west of the large disappearing rifles on the top of the cliff. Angel Island is being for- tified, and the guns already delivered there will soon be mounted. cate exactly the distance and direction of the object at which the observer is look- ing. From the range finder there run, like nerves in underground channels, bun- dles of telegraph, telephone and indicator wires, and also speaking tubes, to the gunner at each of the big guns below. The ranger-finder 1s situated in a room which has its floor about five feet below the level of the ground. The walls are of three-foot concrete, with a slit cut out of one corner which faces seaward and commands a sweep of 150 degrees. Over ’ DEC MoRTAR BREECH OF GuUN OPEN AND CLCSED all is a roof of two tee. br concrete, and on top of that is about six feet of earth, making a sort of bomb-proof mound with no vulnerable opening but the eyelike slit that seems as though hidden by its drooping concrete lds. In the fortress of the Presidio of San Francisco there are on the heights trim, long, neat looking guns, so slim and dainty in their lines that they remind you of the neatly rolled umbrella of a club- man., In all there are sixteen of these appa- PiERCING rently slight and eleg: fense fin de siecle loca: eminence. There Is something .lonely and dreary about the long guns up on the cliff that poke their 1 muzzles out over the sea until their tips are' lost in the fog that rises from the warm water of the Japan current, washing the foot of the cliffs be- neath them. They are distant and exclu- sive, and each of them occupies as much room as two dozen guns of similar bore in the fort on the water's edge, for down it weapons of de- ed upon their lone there they are sociall a trough at s at t em snuggle Thers are already class disappearing g s @ them over eight inches In capable of throw 500 to 1000 pounds ten m feet per sec ed and discharged once utes, giving from the nearly every ten seconds. this is a deck-plercing bat or more large mortars of of the first loading type a 3 of guns for accuracy and rapidit fire, except the reason that necessarily high trajectory causes their accuracy to be e Tected by windage a slustve t On a sixty. the rear of was recently deeded the city and county of San ancisco to the Go m- of the United ates there is being erected a new and separ h is to pravent a h off south of the CY fireworks on the roo ings and busy stores. as w been pos- sible at the time tha anish war broke out. Across the na Point bluf? is a modern guns placed at ar ever 400 feet, w sea coast fort the angle at vate her heav the westward placed a novelty com detensty in shore def posed of s pick off the gt range-finders among the clifftops on shore. Al ut the mortar batterfes on the Pres ights and around some of t rifles there are ted masses of e green trees for the purpose of masking the defenses and preventing ors on the sea from obtaining any definite point for a target. The position of a vessel having been fixed by the range-finders, she is lo- cated as being in & certain one of the small squares Into which the harbor's mouth is arbitrarily divided on the gun- ner's chart. The horizontal angle to which the gun must be turned om its vertical axis and the slevation in degrees to he glven its muzzle In order to give the projectile t roper trajectory to square have already e engineer. Them the the number of the s. table, reads off the to which each axi turned, moves t machinery un on the degree called for in t N fires the gun without having even seen the ship he is alming to destroy. San Francisco should be proud of what has been d and what s planned to be done for her by the Government. The security that it affords to all cannot but help in the general development of the clty.