Iowa County democrat. [volume] (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1877-1938, 1886-10-01
AFASCINATlNG SUBJECT.

4 Chemist Who Is Intensely Interested in
Dynamite-The Part 1t Is Destined to PLAY
in the Wars Of the Future Other Ex-
pl0SiyCs.
A chemist, sitting in a musty little
laboratory in the back of an uptown
house, talked to a reporter about dyna-
mite.
ut is a fascinating subject" he said
"a man who once begins to experiment
with the stuff never stops until his sudden
dislntegration, so to speak, which follows
an explosion renders him incapable of
anything more with it. 1 wouldn't like
to assert that they all die with their boots
on; don't know, you know, about that
l never was present when one died. Still,
| dynamite is not sach 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 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
AT his shoulder"
Certainly. Bat he did mt ram the shell
clear home. He left a good long cushion
of air between the shell and the charge of
| powder. That is the secret of firing dyna-
mite with gunpowder charge. There
must be an air-cushiOn behind the shell.
| 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 fred by a detona-
| tor, the last grain, 215 feet away from the
! detonator, will explode just one-hun
! dred'h of z second after the detonator
! goes off. That is pretty fast travelling.
/ A shell from one OF those big cannons
! that throw projectiles ten miles away
| would only cover twenty feat 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
/ it is very contrary, and knocks big hole
/ in the hardest substance in its neighbor-
hood, but not always. Some soldiers on
/ Fort Lafayette once fred a cartridge
/ hoIping sixteen pounds of dynamite
/ against the grassy slope OF an embank-
/ ment on Fort Hamilton. The explosion
moved the grass thereabouts, but did not
/ otherwise disturb the turf. Ten pounds
/ placed loosely on top of a pile of boiler
iron blew a 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 tamp-
ing.
with all its uncertainty, nevertheless,
I dynamite viii play big part in the next
great war. Twenty years ago 1t was a
chemists curiosity. Now 1t 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 froRa the government. In England
It has made great deal of trouble for
the authorities, even when intended for
legitimate uses They have an inspector
OF explosives, Col. Majendie, and a lot OF
assistants. When z man wants to manu-
facture a ne= explosive. he must get q
license from the colonel, and before he
can do that his stuff 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 II
water does net destroy the power of a
nitro-gIycerine compound. One dar last
year some men we're working on an old
hulk at Larne, which had been sunk nins
years before with some dynamite on
. board They succeeded IN setting it of
and two of them were killed. When any