I believe Mr Sharp was an advocate of the "Powley Computer" which took a lot of guesswork/calculation time out of his experiments.
Mr Sharp's "experiment" was carried out by several different militaries, shortly after "smokeless" powders and "metal cased cartridges" were adopted.
Mr Sharp knew his stuff and followed up on those findings with powders currently available for the time period, and showed the sportsmen of the day, in "layman's" terms, what their rifle/cartridge combinations were capable of, for use in field hunting/match shooting situations, rather than battlefield conditions, where one firearm had to meet the needs of 98% of the situations which would normally be encountered.
His findings were quite a revelation for many shooters, after they were published and distributed.
We get bogged down with lightning speed velocities, because they look great on paper.
It's a very nice surprise when a rifle shoots its best at close to maximum safe pressures/velocities.
Most rifles don't.
The smart hunter/shooter finds the sweet spot and figures out how to utilize it within his/her priorities for their style of hunting.