Charles Hinton’s Baseball Pitching Cannon,Charles Hinton was a mathematics professor with Prin

Charles Hinton’s Baseball Pitching Cannon,Charles Hinton was a mathematics professor with Princeton University who specialized in studying higher dimensions.  Famous for coining the term “tesseract”, he is also famous for inventing the first baseball pitching machine.  Invented in 1897, Hinton’s pitching machine was actually a cannon with two rubber guide arms at the muzzle, which could be altered to change the trajectory of the ball (as in the case of the curveball).  The ball’s velocity could be changed by altering the gunpowder charge.  The cannon was ignited either with an electronic system, or with a blank cartridge fired from a device constructed from a Remington Rolling Block rifle. The first experiments with Hinton’s pitching cannon were less than successful. Often the cannon would blast the ball at high speeds.  In addition the ball would often be charred or covered with gunpowder residue, making it impossible for a batter to see as it flied through the air. In a couple of cases, players were injured after being beaned in the head by a high velocity projectile fired from the Hinton cannon. After experimentation, Hinton discovered the right powder charges needed to propel a ball at anywhere from 70 - 90 MPH. Hinton’s baseball cannon would be short lived as other inventors created more efficient designs, such as the spinning wheel designs used today. -- source link
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