Fort
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Fort. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a military stronghold. It seems natural for man to shelter himself behind a tree, a rock, a heap of earth, or something of the sort as a means of protection when attacked. In time of danger the Roman legion threw up an earthen wall around a rectangle wherever it encamped even for a night. The early settlers of America protected themselves by stockades consisting of log houses and of timbers planted closely together in a ditch. Either log or sod forts were in general use. Fort Sumter was constructed of brick. Old Fort Moultrie was built of palmetto logs. Much study has been given to the subject of fortifications. It has been found that a pile of sand is the best known stop for a cannon ball. In a recent test at the Woolwich arsenal near London, bolts weighing as high as 1,300 pounds, and charges of powder up to 300 pounds, were used. The guns were discharged into a bank of sand. The results were measured with care. One of the heaviest bolts bored along through the sand like a mole at a distance of about five feet below the surface, and yet it penetrated but forty-seven feet. The United States government has built a system of coast defenses at great expense. Not to mention minor forts, twenty-seven first-class defenses extend along the Atlantic coast from Fort Foster in Portsmouth harbor, Maine, to Key West , off the southern extremity of Florida. Six are situated on the Gulf of Mexico and eight on the Pacific coast. The typical defense is a broad, low mound of sand. The interior is constructed of masonry, perhaps thirty feet thick. The outside presents the aspect of a low hill covered with greensward or shrubbery so as to attract no particular attention from warships at sea. As a further measure of concealment, smokeless powder is used. These forts are defended by enormous rifles, the largest of which throw a twelve-inch bolt. A gun of this sort is forty feet in length and weighs over 100,000 pounds. It requires a charge of about 500 pounds of powder and throws its bolts to a distance of nine miles. The total cost of such a gun, including its carriage and the concrete base on which it stands, is not far from $150,000. The exact number and size of guns in any particular fort is not made public; but it is known that Fort Warren in Boston harbor has an armament of about thirty. Most of the great guns are mounted on a mechanism known as a disappearing carriage, by means of which the rifle is raised up into position. After it has been discharged it sinks back again into a place of safety behind its earthen wall. When guns are mounted in an elevated position, they are protected by revolving steel turrets with conical roofs. During the last twenty-five years the United States has spent well on toward $20,000,000 in constructing coast defenses and arming them with modern guns. During the same period the United Kingdom has spent about $40,000,000 in fortifying its principal harbors. The various governments of continental Europe have expended corresponding sums in harbor defenses. As the late capture of Port Arthur has shown, however, it is safe to say that the skill of man is unable to construct any fortification capable of withstanding a prolonged and well directed siege. See Blockhouse ; Vauban
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
in the general sense of the word, a small, inclosed work, usually erected near an important fortress or fortified town, to command any of the approaches to it. Forts are also frequently erected on the sea coast, for the defense of certain positions. They are generally quadrilateral, with bastions or demibastions at the angles, but it depends mainly on the position they occupy, whether they are triangular, square, polygonal, or in the form of a crown-work or star . They consist for the most part of a rampart, surrounded with a ditch and glacis; but in some cases an outwork is constructed for the defense of any side on which it may be more easily assailed. Paris is completely girdled a chain of carefully forts, mostly pentagonal, in in the shape of an enceinte, and situated at distances varying from a mile to 2½ miles from the inner line of bastions that encircle the city. In North America, generally, the name was also applied to a trading post in the wilderness with reference ding to the indispensable defenses, however slight, against the surrounding savages.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 confidence in "a broad, low mound of sand" hiding twelve-inch disappearing rifles that threw a shell nine miles was already near its end: aircraft, long-range naval gunnery and then missiles made fixed coastal batteries indefensible, and the U.S. Coast Artillery Corps was abolished in 1950, its guns scrapped and its forts turned over to parks and museums — Fort Sumter became a national monument in 1948, Fort Warren a Boston harbor park. The wider lesson Aiton drew from Port Arthur was confirmed in 1940, when German forces simply went around the Maginot Line through the Ardennes. Collier's picture of Paris "completely girdled" by pentagonal forts was out of date as it was printed: the Thiers enceinte was condemned in 1919 and cleared through the 1920s and 1930s, its ring now carrying the Boulevard Périphérique. What survives of the word is mostly civil — place names like Fort Worth and Fort Wayne, and the trading-post sense Collier's noted.
Written for this edition, 2026.