Also known as: Dr. John Braham Read.
| Home | Tuscaloosa, Alabama |
|---|---|
| Profession | Surgeon and projectile inventor |
| Key patent | U.S. Patent 15,999, October 28, 1856 |
| Legacy | The Read cup-sabot method |
Surgeon and projectile inventor
Dr. John Braham Read, a surgeon of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, experimented with projectiles largely at his own expense in the years before the war. In 1856 he patented a method of casting a cupped wrought-iron sabot into the base of a projectile so that it expanded into the rifling on firing.
This cup-sabot principle became one of the attachment methods Confederate foundries adopted for rifled shells, so that Read-derived projectiles appear widely in Southern ordnance.
On this site
Sources & further reading
- CivilWarArtillery.com research archive: biographical and ordnance references.