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----- Original Message -----
Many ships in the age of sail carried
cannon for protection. Cannon of the
times required round iron
cannonballs. The master wanted to store the
cannonballs such that they
could be of instant use when needed, yet not roll
around the gun deck.
The solution was to stack them up in a square-based
pyramid next to the
cannon. The top level of the stack had one ball, the
next level down
had four, the next had nine, the next had sixteen, and so
on.
Four
levels would provide a stack of 30 cannonballs. The only real
problem
was how to keep the bottom level from sliding out from under the
weight of
the higher levels. To do this, they devised a small brass
plate ("brass
monkey") with one rounded indentation for each cannonball in
the bottom
layer. Brass was used because the cannonballs wouldn't rust
to the "brass
monkey," but would rust to an iron one. When temperature
falls, brass
contracts in size faster than iron. As it got cold on the
gun decks, the
indentations in the brass monkey would get smaller than the
iron cannonballs
they were holding. If the temperature got cold enough,
the bottom layer
would pop out of the indentations spilling the entire
pyramid over the deck.
Thus it was, quite literally, "cold enough to freeze
the balls off a brass
monkey."
Hope your New Year is a warm
one.
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