Henry Ernest Dudeney/Modern Puzzles/99 - The Rejected Gun

by : $99$

 * The Rejected Gun
 * Here is a military puzzle that may or may not give you a moment's difficulty.
 * It is such a simple question that a child can understand it and no knowledge of artillery is required.
 * Yet some of my readers may find themselves perplexed for quite five minutes.


 * An inventor offered a new large gun to the committee appointed by our Government for the consideration of such things.
 * He declared that when once loaded it would fire sixty shots at the rate of a shot a minute.
 * The War Office put it to the test and found that it fired sixty shots an hour,
 * but declined it, "as it did not fulfil the promised condition."


 * "Absurd, said the inventor, "for you have shown that it clearly does all that we undertook it should do."
 * "Nothing of the sort," said the experts. "It has failed."


 * Now, can you explain this extraordinary mystery?
 * Was the inventor, or were the experts, right?