Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1886-10-07
A FASCINATING SUBJECT.

chemist, sitting in a musty little
laboratory IN the back of an uptown
house, talked to reporter about dyna-
mite.
1T is fascinating subject" he said.
"a man who once begins to experiment
with the stuff never stops until his sudden
dis1ntegration, SO to speak, which follows
an explosion renders him incapable of
anything more with it. | Wouldn't like
to assert that they all die with their boots
on; don't know, you know, about tina
/ never was present when one died. Still,
dynamite is not such very dangerous
stuff, after all. 1t is exploded by con-
cussion, but If properly made it doesn't
explode very easily.
"A friend of mine," he went on. ''be-
came interested in dynamite projectiles.
He thought he'd try some experiments
with them, and began with a double-bar-
relied shotgun. His shells were made to
contain from one to two ounces of the
stuff, and he fired them successfully from
the gum"
SAT his shoulder?''
Certainly. But he didn't ram the shell
clear home. He left good long cushion
Of air between the shell and the charge of
powder. That is the secret of firing dyna-
mite with a gunpowder charge. There
must be an air-cushion behind the she'll
The secret of the power of dynamite, or
any such explosive, is in the fact that the
solid becomes a gas with such great
speed. The rate at which it burns can be
estimated and stated In figures. If a roll
of dynamite 215 feet long be stretched
out, and one end of it fired by detona-
tor, the last grain, 215 feet away from the
detonator, will explode just one-hun-
dredth of second after the detonator
goes off. That is pretty fast travelling.
shell from one of those big cannons
that throw proiectiles ten miles away
would only cover twenty feet in the same
time, even if just leaving the muzzle of
the gun. We know, therefore, about how
hard the stuff jumps, but we never know
exactly which way it will jump. Usually
1t is very contrary, and knocks big hole
In the hardest substance in its neighbor-
hood, but not always. Some soldiers on
Fort Lafayette once fired cartridge
holplng sixteen pounds of dynamite
againat the grassy slope of an embank-
ment on Fort Hamilton. The explosion
moved the grass Whereabouts, but did not
otherwise disturb the turf. Ten pounds
placed loosely on top of a pile of boiler
iron blew hole through dozen of the
plates. And yet the cartridge struck the
embankment with what might be called
the inertia of its own weight for lamp
ing.
with all it's uncertainty, nevertheless,
dynamite will play big part in the next
great war. Twenty years ago it was a
chemists curiosity. Now it is in the
hands of every cellar digger. In this
country it is made by anyone who owns a
patent, and practically without let or hin
drance from the goveRnment. In England
it has made a great deal of trouble for
the authorities, even when intended for
legitimate uses. They have an inspector
of explosives, Col. Maiendie, and lot of
assistants. When man wants to manu-
facture new explosive, he must get
license from the colonel, and before he
can InaG sJuH must be submitted |
to a series of tests. These tests, and the
natural tests to which the stuff is submitted
during ordinary use, are teaching the in
spectors something every year. They
learned for instance, that soaking in
water does not destroy the power of a
nitro glycerine compound. One day last
year some men were working on an old
hulk at Larne, which had been sunk nine
years before with some dynamite on
board. They succeeded In setting it off
and two of them were killed. When any
package supposed to be an Internal ma
chine is found and turned over to the
police, the first thing done with it over
there is to place it in a bath of water,
where it is allowed to soak for an hour a
day, OR week, according to the lack of
nerve of the policeman. Some rascally
anarchist will yet teach the policeman
better than to soak their Internal machine
in the water by using a decorator in the
machine that is set off by moisture. The
big dynamite shells which Lieut.. Zaliski
fires from his air-gun at Fort Layfayette
are exploded by a minute electric battery
no longer than the end of your finger,
hat operates only after it is plunged into
water.
"What worries the British public quite
as much as the Fenian threats is the stu
pidity of the workmen who handle the
dynamite about the mines and quarries.
The workmen there have not the adyan-
tage of an education, and so when they
have lost the brute fear of the stuff, which
all feel when first brought into contract
with it, they become reckless to terrify
ing degree. A report furnished by Col.
MaJenule says tnaG one man Win Dox
holding fifty pounds of it got thirsty
while carrying it past public house, and
setting the box on the doorstep went in
side and got drunk. The account pub
lished in local paper next day of the
Keeling journey of that man after he left
the public house Mortified the people of
three counties. One engineer tried to get
frozen cartridge into hole in a rock
that was so small as to make very snug
fit. When half way in the cartridge jam
med. The engineer tried to drive it with
a hammer, and thus made an awful ex
ample of himself, for the cartridge ex
ploded and blew him to fragments. An
other miner went into a public house and
drank pot of ale, leaving a cart con-
tanning fifteen hundred pounds of dyna-
mite and fifteen hundred detomators un-
attended in the street. The horse was
sober and sedate, else the town might
have suffered from a local disturbance in
the air and earth that would have been
noteworthy in the history of dynamite in
Great Britain. Another miner got into
third-class car, well loaded with people,