The first columbiads produced in 1811 had a diameter bore and fired a fifty-pound projectile. Although some Second System forts were armed with this weapon, the Army did not widely adopt early columbiads due to initial high costs of manufacture. Only after 1844 did an eight-inch model and a ten-inch model see mass production. The eight-inch columbiad could project a 65-pound shell or for solid shot; the weapon weighed. The ten-inch columbiad weighed and hefted a 128-pound shell to or solid shot to. These cast-iron weapons were typically mounted on seacoast carriages designed to recoil up a slightly inclined set of "rails" or wooden beams. The mounted columbiad could pivot left or right on a traversing rail. In most cases the arc of pivot was less than 180 degrees, but some batteries allowed 360-degree traverse. Just prior to the American Civil War, Ordnance CorpsofficerThomas Jackson Rodman developed an improved version of the columbiad, which became known by his name. Specifically the Rodman gun was designed to reduce cracking and other weaknesses found in such large iron castings. The process involved ensured the iron cooled evenly from the inside out, and resulted in what we might call today a "soda bottle" shaped casting with smooth, tapered exterior. The "Rodman" process also allowed the manufacture of much larger bore columbiads. Between 1858 and the end of the Civil War, Northern foundries produced eight-inch, ten-inch, fifteen-inch and twenty-inch Rodman style columbiads. The smaller bore columbiads shared similar range factors to the older weapons, but the fifteen-inch models weighed over 25 tons and could fire 400-pound projectiles out to. The monster twenty-inch model weighed over 60 tons but could range to over. Very few of the largest types were built, and none were during the war. Sling carts were used to transport these guns to the forts where they were emplaced in gun carriages. The Confederate States also used columbiads extensively, mostly stocks captured from Federal arsenals at the time of secession. These acquitted themselves well against early ironclad warships. In addition, the Confederates produced limited quantities of eight-inch and ten-inch columbiads without the Rodman process; these could not withstand sustained use. The Confederates also rifled some columbiads in an effort to improve weapon performance. After the Civil War, many columbiads remained in place at seacoast fortifications around the U.S. In the late 1870s several were rifled and tested for use against modern steel clad ships, with poor results. Strapped for funding, the post-war army continued to carry smooth-bore columbiads on inventory lists until after the Spanish–American War, when modern breech-loading rifled cannon replaced them. Many columbiads are on display at Federal and state parks, "guarding" courthouses around the United States, as well as in city parks with accompanying historical markers, commemorating the 19th-century seacoast fortifications.
In fiction
In Jules Verne's novel From the Earth to the Moon, a giant columbiad space gun is constructed in Tampa, Florida after the American Civil War, with the purpose of striking the Moon. Although the cannon is originally designed to fire a hollow aluminum ball, a bullet-shaped projectile is later designed with the purpose of carrying people. This fictional columbiad is made of cast iron six feet thick, is 900 feet long, and has a bore with a diameter of nine feet. It weighs more than 68,000 short tons and is therefore cast directly in the ground, rather than being mounted on rails. The cannon is then loaded with 400,000 pounds of "pyroxyle" to give the projectile sufficient velocity to leave Earth's atmosphere and reach the Moon. A vastly scaled-down depiction of this fictional cannon was built as a launch cannon for the French version of at Disneyland Paris. Originally named "Space Mountain: De la Terre à la Lune", the ride was loosely based on Verne's novel, and the attraction's exterior was built using a Verne-era retro-futuristic influence.
