TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog

Category: Technology

  • Was Justice Scalia wrong About Citizen Militias Having “Cannon” Under the Second Amendment?

    In a recent interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News, Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the Court’s conservative justices (and one known for his support of citizen gun rights), said: Wallace: You wrote in 2008, the opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller, the majority opinion that said the Second Amendment means what it says, […]

  • Miscellaneous Ramblings

    In spite of having a lot of Civil War related material I have been missing in action for the last few weeks or so writing an article on the battle of Fort Mahone and updating a rescue book. However, I hope to have a bit more time to blog. Some time ago I posted on […]

  • Short Takes

    Body armor has been around since Neolithic times and made somewhat of a revival in the Civil War. However it was never officially sanctioned and was mostly discarded both for its weight and because it left its wearer open to implications of cowardice. Modern soldiers wear quite a lot of it, but as in the […]

  • Victorian Steampunk Machines

    I mentioned steampunk submarines in a previous post, but there’s more. T’was an elegant age in which designers were not afraid to make things beautiful as well as functional. There is a movement afoot in Britain to finally build Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine. Babbage, one of the age’s greatest geniuses, designed but never completed a […]

  • The Impact of Railroads on Warfare During the American Civil War

    Editor’s Note: Dave Hollis is a guest poster with an avid interest in military history.  He is a member of the the U.S. Army Reserve and has been published several times.  Dave’s first (but hopefully not last) post here at TOCWOC concerns the impact of railroads on the American Civil War. The American Civil war […]

  • Gun Auction

    Rock Island Auction Company is having a big gun auction later this month. I always like to look but of course there’s no way I could buy any of them. Just as well, I suppose. There are a couple of Civil War era guns worth looking at. One is a nice 1860s era target rifle, […]

  • Google Earth and Civil War Battlefields

    Poster “historicus” over at the History Channel forums recently had an extremely good idea.  He used Google Maps to take a look at Civil War battlefields.  Poster “Scotsman” gave readers a few sites he found after the suggestion was made: 39 28’15.06″ N 77 44’15.34″ W (Bloody Lane, Antietam) 39 47’29.89″ N 77 14’32.59″ W […]