The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-07-12

Professor Munroe is dean of the Co.,
 lumbia university and the foremost
 expert on explosives in this country, He
 added:
 Though the Vesuvius is called
 dynamite cruiser, the explosive em-
 ployed in her projectiles is wet gun
 cotton. Before long, expect, she will
 use 'jovite' instead. This is new sub-
 stance with which the United States
 navy is at present experimenting. It IS
 high explosive of tremendous effici-
 ency, and I am of the opinion that it is
 destined to take the place of gunpow-
 der to a great extent. And why not?
 Safer than gunpowder, it has an ener-
 gy equal to that of dynamite Shells filled with it have been put through 14la inches of nickel-steel armor, not exploding until they reached the other side.
 Do you realize what this signifies? It means that such shell would enter
 the hull of the most heavily armored vessel and explode on the inside. The result, of course, would be the total destruction of the ship not the mighti- | est battleship could survive such catastrophe. An armor- piercing shell
 of the pattern now in use contains no bursting charge; it is made of such | tough material that gunpowder would not explode it. But such projectiles ! loaded with jovite are able not only to l make holes in armor, but to create /, the most tremendous havoc after l piercing.
 Under present conditions the Vesu- vius is type of craft that carries It. | self the elements of it's own destruc- 1 ton. Of course, this might be said of ] any ship of war that contains pow | der magazine but the case of the dyna- mite cruiser is somewhat peculiar. The | charges packed in her projectiles are | large masses of wet guncotton, and | that substance is harmless enough by | reason of the 35 per cent. of moisture 1 that it holds But the guncotton shell l has to be detonated by small quan- ! tity of dry guncotton, which is an ex- l tremely dangerous material to handle. | A shell striking a quantity of the dry ] guncotton would blow up the vessel If | 'jovite were utilized as a substitute it
 would be equally effective as an ex- | plosive and its use would involve no risks whatever. 'Joyite' cannot be set l off by mere concussion The navy de- 1 partment has been making trials with | it for some time past, and it's adoption l is only a question of brief time. i "Of course, I need not tell you of | the difficulties which experts have en- l countered in dealing with high exple sives for war purposes It is not that | the handling of them requires such delicacy of manipulation, but that they go off so quickly as to be unavailable 1 for ordinary uses. They will not serve | as charges for guns, because they 1 burst the weapon before the projectile | has time to be exnelled. According, so | far as ordnance is concerned they are | serviceable only as filling for the | shells. Indeed, even in this way they | have been considered worthless hith- | erto because of the danger.
 "But 'iovite' has solved the problem. | Loaded in a shell 1t is safer than gun | powder; only fuse or a detonator will set it off. Tn other words, it may be I employed as if it were harmless sub-
 stance from the point of view of the | gunner, though at determined period
 after it's discharge it is transformed
 into an instrument of hellish destruc- { tiveness. During the present conflict, l for the first time in history, bursting
 shells of the armor- piercing kind will be
 employed; they will mark Q new epoch in the development of naval war 1 fare Perhaps I should explain that | the 141a-inch armor experimented upon
 with such shells consisted of Harvey | ized plates like those which are being
 put on the battleship Kentucky, now building.
 'Jovite' is the invention of Swede
 named Blomen. It is a mixture of cer-
 tain coal-tar product with metallic
 nitrate. Nothing possibly could be
 more safe in the way of an explosive. l Though it's energy is so tremendous, it
 will not explode if struck by rife
 ball. Of course dynamite will explode
 under such circumstances, and that is
 one reason why the latter is such per | ilous stuff to handle in war. Another | objection to dynamite is that it makes | the soldiers sick. If little of it be
 rubbed on the hands some of the nitro- | glycerine contained in it is absorbed, | and hence the unpleasant feeling. | when dynamite has been fired the men
 have to wait fifteen or twenty minutes | for the sickening vapors to pass off. IHlS HledHS d WdSle OI LIllle tudt may be extremely valuable.
 During the last few weeks Wash l ington people have been frequently alarmed by loud and repeated eXplo- | sions, which the timid are inclined to attribute to bombardment by Span 1 ish warships coming up the Potomac. 1 The fact is that these noises have been
 made by myself on Analostan Island, ] with the help of materials which were /, placed at my disposal, for purposes of | instruction rather than destruction A l number of residents of the district, | most of them men of scientic training, were desirous of learning something
 about explosives in a practical way in | order that they might offer their ser | vices to the government. One of these | students was Wirt Tassin, of the Ma | tional Museum. Another was T. A. | Witherspoon, an examiner in the Pat
 ent Office, and yet another was Dr. Allen, chemist in the Department of 1 Agriculture. In addition to these I
 may mention Dr. Peter Fireman, an in- structor in chemistry in the Columbian | University; Julius L. Arnozen, an agri- | culturist chemist; N Munroe Hopkins. an electrician, and Eugene Byrnes, of
 the Patent Office. There were several l others besides.