is there a way at the archive to print some of these?
They can have their contractor do it but as I recall you have to have deep pockets unless you only want a few of them done. Best to go there with yr digital camera and snap away to your heart's content, that's what I do these days. This microfilm was made back before there were digital cameras is the reason I had to put them up in a less-than-perfect format.
write a book?
I've been asked that before and I answer that I'm more comfortable writing magazine articles on one cannon at a time. I wrote a number of articles for The Artilleryman back in mid-1980's. Each cannon has a story, some of them pretty long ones, and I don't think the average person's attention span is long enough for a whole book on that.
I don't think anyone will ever beat Warren Ripley's ARTILLERY AND AMMUNITION OF THE CIVIL WAR as far as a readable but comprehensive cannon book, and I'm not going to try. BTW if you don't have that book, you need it, I think if you were only going to have a few cannon books in your library, they should te Ripley's book, Manucy's ARTILLERY THROUGH THE AGES (available a couple of places in online format,) and Peterson's classic ROUND SHOT AND RAMMERS. Those three will get you through Cannonology 101.
A friend of mine "lost his a__" after financing and publishing a book about Civil War weapons, and even ones with a lot more collector appeal than my cannons, so I think a big, expensive coffee-table book is out of the question for me unless somebody else wants to fund it 100%. Whenever I get two pennies to rub together, as I think you know, I buy either a cannon, a cannon book, an interesting piece of ammo, or some accoutrement.
