The n-Gun Salute
Kirt's Cogitations™ #108

RF Cafe University "Factoids," "Kirt's Cogitations," and "Tech Topics Smorgasbord" are all manifestations of my ranting on various subjects relevant (usually) to the overall RF Cafe theme. All may be accessed on these pages:

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The n-Gun Salute

From whence came the 21-gun salute? The origin of gun salutes is usually attributed to soldiers or other armed types demonstrating peaceful intentions by placing their weapons in a position that rendered them ineffective. As cannons and small arms came into use, a good way to "render them ineffective," thereby demonstrating peaceful intentions, was to fire them since reloading took a lot of time. At sea, seven shots became the norm. On land, gunpowder was more plentiful, and three guns could be fired for every one shot from a ship, so a salute from a ship of seven guns would be answered by a salute from the shore batteries of 21 guns. For a full-honor funeral at Arlington, a President gets 21 guns. A secretary of defense, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or other military officer given command over multiple branches of the service receives 19. 17 guns are fired for a four-star general, 15 for a three-star, 13 for a two-star, 11 for a one-star.

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RF Cafe began life in 1996 as "RF Tools" in an AOL screen name web space totaling 2 MB. Its primary purpose was to provide me with ready access to commonly needed formulas and reference material while performing my work as an RF system and circuit design engineer. The World Wide Web (Internet) was largely an unknown entity at the time and bandwidth was a scarce commodity. Dial-up modems blazed along at 14.4 kbps while tying up your telephone line, and a lady's voice announced "You've Got Mail" when a new message arrived...