The nation soon obtained value from the new development. The efficiency of the Enfield rifle at the Alma and at Inkerman was attested by the correspondent of _The Times_, who reported that “it smote the enemy like a destroying angel.” Three years later the Indian Mutiny afforded a still more conclusive proof of the value of this weapon. Though, from the greased cartridges which were used, it served as one of the pretexts for the mutiny, it proved in the sequel a powerful military instrument, and demonstrated both to friend and foe its superiority over the smooth-bore musket with which the rebels were armed. In fact, with the adoption of the Enfield rifle, England found herself in advance even of France; the French, partly perhaps from motives of economy, partly from a desire for symmetry, had retained in their Minié rifle the same calibre as that of their old smooth-bore: indeed, the greater part of the French army rifles were merely converted smooth-bores. In the Enfield a wise reduction of calibre had been made; whereby, while the weight of the rifle was reduced, its strength and the size of the permissible charges, and therefore the range and penetrating power of the projectile were all considerably augmented. Having once gained the lead, England now took another rapid move forward in the development of the rifle. Though the new standards set by the Enfield were high, expert opinion aimed at something still higher; the Enfield gave variations in range and direction which could not be accounted for by errors in manufacture, nor did the range and penetrative power of the bullet come up to expectations. In these circumstances the government sought the advice of a man whose name was destined to loom large in the story of the subsequent development of ordnance: Mr. Whitworth. Mr. Whitworth was described as the greatest mechanical genius in Europe at that time. Certain it is that, although in the realm of ordnance his name may have been overshadowed to a certain extent by that of his great rival, yet on the broad ground of the influence his inventions exerted on the progress of mechanical science generally, his fame now grows with time. He it was who first swept away the medieval conception of measurement which hitherto had obtained in factories and workshops, and introduced a scientific precision into the manufacture of machines and mechanisms. The true plane surface, as we know it to-day, was unattained before his time; and his contemporaries marvelled at plates of metal prepared by him of so true a surface that, by their mere adhesion, one could be lifted by means of the other. The micrometer was a similar revelation. Men whose minimum of size had hitherto been the thickness of a chalk-line or a simple fraction of an inch, were taught by him to measure the inch to its ten-thousandth part, and even to gauge the expansion of a rod caused by the warmth imparted by the contact of a finger.