Huge artillery pieces appeared in Europe in the 15th century, but until about 1670 the word cannon was applied only to special types of guns. These were usually divided into the cannon royal, or double cannon, which weighed about 8,000 pounds (3,630 kg) and fired a ball weighing 60–63 pounds (27–28 kg); the whole cannon, which weighed about 7,000 pounds and fired a 38–40-pound ball; and the demicannon of about 6,000 pounds, which shot a 28–30-pound ball. Other large guns were not called cannon but bore different names (e.g., culverin) that indicated their size and function.

During the third quarter of the 17th century, large guns came to be designated by the weight of their projectiles and secondarily by their other characteristics—i.e., whether they were field or siege types, and whether they were called light or heavy, short or long. The name cannon gradually came to be applied to every gun fired from a carriage or fixed mount and with a bore larger than one inch.

In the 20th century, rapid-firing guns of 20 mm (0.8 inch) and larger mounted in aircraft and firing explosive shells were called automatic cannon. In 1953 the U.S. Army introduced a 280-millimetre gun, the first built to fire atomic-explosive shells; it was called an atomic cannon. Similar weapons were displayed by the U.S.S.R. in 1957. In later years, atomic explosives were fitted into shells small enough to be fired in standard artillery. See artillery.