Henri-Joseph Paixhans [SEP] place of death
Henri-Joseph Paixhans
Henri-Joseph Paixhans (; January 22, 1783, Metz – August 22, 1854, Jouy-aux-Arches) was a French artillery officer of the beginning of the 19th century.
Henri-Joseph Paixhans graduated from the École Polytechnique. He fought in the Napoleonic Wars, was the representative (Député) for the Moselle department between 1830 and 1848, and became "General de Division" in 1848.
In 1823, he invented the first shell guns, which came to be called
developed by the French general Henri-Joseph Paixhans in 1822–1823. He advocated using flat-trajectory shell guns against warships in 1822 in his "Nouvelle force maritime et artillerie", and developed a delaying mechanism which, for the first time, allowed shells to be fired safely in high-powered flat-trajectory guns. The effect of explosive shells lodging into wooden hulls and then detonating was potentially devastating. This was first demonstrated by Henri-Joseph Paixhans in trials against the two-decker "Pacificateur" in 1824, in