The writer was the first to dispel this folly, through the invention of Maximite, a high explosive which will stand not only the shock of being fired from heavy guns at high velocities, but which will also, without exploding, stand the far greater shock of penetrating the heaviest armorplate--armorplate as heavy as the projectile will stand to pass through without breaking up. While I was working upon Maximite and trying to get the Government to adopt it, Congress appropriated the money for building an eighteen-inch gun for testing a shell invented by Louis Gathmann, which was intended to destroy battleships by exploding the shell on the outside of their heavy armorplate, it being believed that if five hundred pounds of guncotton were to be fired against the side of an armored ship and exploded, the whole side of the ship would be blown in and the vessel destroyed.