Before the discovery by Nobel that the absorption of nitroglycerin by infusorial earth rendered it much less sensitive to shock, numerous attempts were made to bring it into general use, in liquid form, as a blasting agent, the most notable of which was during the digging of the Hoosac Tunnel. But, owing to its highly sensitive character, fatalities were numerous; while, furthermore, the necessity for perfect purity in order to render nitroglycerin stable—that is to say, to make it keep well—was not at first recognized, and many disasters were the result from explosions due to its decomposition.
The first attempt to introduce nitroglycerin as a blasting agent into the United States was made by a young German student. He called the stuff “glonoin oil.” He brought over a few hundred pounds in cans on the steamer with him, most of which he disposed of during his sojourn in theStates. But his venture was not a financial success, and he was obliged, when he returned to Europe, to leave an unpaid board bill at a New York hotel where he had been staying. He had left one fifty-pound can of glonoin oil, which he let the hotel proprietor hold as security, but which, however, later developments proved to be insecurity.
The glonoin oil occupied a place of honor in one corner of the barroom for several months after the departure of the German student. Decomposition having set in, yellow nitrous fumes began to emerge from the receptacle, the malevolent odor of which was soon noticed by one of the guests, who called the landlord’s attention to the fact. Highly disgusted, the landlord picked up the can, walked to the front door, and threw it into the middle of the street. The act resulted in a miniature earthquake, which shattered the walls on both sides of the street, broke window-glass over a square mile, and landed the hotel proprietor in the hospital.
During the Russo-Japanese war a certain officer of the Czar, who was an impatient, overbearing person and a great martinet, had a Chinese servant whom he treated with the utmost harshness for the smallest delinquency, or for none at all. One of his favorite methods of inflicting punishment for offenses was to order the Chinaman to leave his presence, and, as the fellow went, to give him a hard kick.
The Chinaman aired his grievances one day to a Japanese spy, whom he took to be a brother Chinaman. The Jap suggested padding the seat of the Chinaman’s trousers to prevent further contusions, and this was done, the padding being furnished by the Jap. A rubber hot-water bag was filled with absorbent cotton containing all the nitroglycerin it would hold. A small exploding device armed with percussion caps was placed in the bag so that the nitroglycerin would be exploded by any sudden blow.The unfortunate Chinaman was wholly unaware of the nature of the padding.
At the next meeting of the Russian with his servant, the poor Oriental inadvertently spilled some tea upon the officer’s new uniform. Thereupon the enraged master proceeded to dismiss the Chinaman from his presence in the usual way, but with somewhat more precipitation.
One of the officer’s legs was blown off, one arm was crushed to pulp, four ribs were broken, and it was more than a day before he was restored to consciousness. When he did come to, he found himself a prisoner in a Japanese hospital, having been left behind by the retreating Russians.
As to the Chinaman himself, poor fellow, he never knew that he had been loaded.
An American reporter, who was with the Japanese during the Manchurian campaign, told me the following story:
Column after column of Japanese had assaulted a Russian position, the capture of which was exceedingly desirable. Line after line of the brave little fellows was swept down by the unerring gun-fire of the Russians, but each time a few Japanese would scale the works, and go over them, only to be slain by the Russians inside.
There was a lull for a short space, and the reporter thought, as doubtless did the Russians, that the Japanese had given up the task, when, suddenly, a troop of perhaps a hundred Japanese rushed forward, in a widely scattered line. Onward they flew toward the Russian position, and, as they went up, there was a blaze of the Russian rifles, and half the Japanese column disappeared with a flash and a tremendous report.... They had exploded!
Each of them had been loaded with an infernal machine, hung across his breast and over his shoulders, so that should but a few of them reach the enemy’s position, they could explode themselves and hurl death and destruction all around them.
The Russians were so astounded, so paralyzed by the spectacle and by the unexpectedness of it, that they ceased firing, while the remaining living bombs scaled the ramparts and leaped in among their enemies, who instantly vacated the place, flying like rats from a sinking ship.
During the Russo-Japanese conflict, more than one of the Czar’s warships disappeared in a night cruise without leaving a trace.
I got the following story somewhat indirectly, and for that reason cannot vouch for its truth. It was told to my informant by a Japanese officer while in rather a more communicative mood than is usual for an officer of the Mikado.
This Japanese official at the time commanded a torpedo-boat. In the flotilla of which his vessel was one there was a torpedo-boat that carried neither guns nor torpedoes, for she had been stripped of all armament and every mechanical device not absolutely essential to her navigation, in order to lighten her. And then she was loaded with dynamite to her full capacity.
The Japanese officer declared that when a volunteer crew of half a dozen men was called for to navigate her, ten times the required number offered themselves, although they well knew that they were going to certain death.
The flotilla was steaming slowly through the darkness one night, not far from Port Arthur, when there suddenly loomed up ahead the huge bulk of a Russian warship. At once the dynamite-laden craft threw herself directly in front of the oncoming leviathan.
Without the pause of an instant, the doomed Japanese crew sprung the huge mine, when a vast cone of flame shot up, reddening the night, carrying with it high into the air, decks, superstructure and guns of the warship. The warship’s magazines, fired simultaneously by the dynamite blast, aided the complete demolition. The returning torrent of guns and wreckage plunged into the sea.
All was over, and it was dark again.
In spite of every precaution at Government proving grounds, big projectiles do sometimes glance out of the butts or heaps of earth into which they are fired, or from the face of armorplates against which they are directed, and finally land in most unexpected quarters.
One day, while a thirteen-inch gun was being tested at Indian Head, a projectile glanced out of the butt, mounted high into the air, and then came down through the roof of a building, where there were engaged a number of officers and book-keepers. The projectile passed down through the floor, close to the desk of one of the officers, and buried itself in the earth.
As the projectile contained no explosive charge, the damage was not great, but the scare that was thrown into the occupants of that room was of considerable magnitude.
One of the most anxious moments that I ever experienced was during some experiments made by me at Maxim in throwing aerial torpedoes from a four-inch cannon.
These torpedoes were about four feet in length, charged with a very powerful high explosive, and armed with a detonating fuze. We had successfully fired several of them into a sand-butt where they exploded with great violence. There were six of them: five had been fired and the sixth was loaded into the gun, ready to be discharged, when a passenger train on the Jersey Central Railroad hove in sight, and was passing us about a thousand feet away as the gun was fired.
We had no idea of there being any danger to the train, as its position was well away from the line of fire, and each of the preceding projectiles had behaved so well. But, this time, the torpedo glanced from the sand-butt, and went after that train. We stoodparalyzed with dread as we saw it pass over the train, close to the roof of a car, and strike in the swamp just beyond it, perhaps a couple of hundred feet behind the track. An inverted cone of black earth shot up, followed by a dull sound.
In imagination we had witnessed a frightful catastrophe, the wreck of a passenger train, with fearful loss of life, and all the horror of our own resultant predicament. Now that the danger was past, the even tenor of our way did take on a new relish. What objects we are, after all, of the mercy of chance!
At the same place, I was one day on the point of beginning an experiment, for which I required a small quantity of dry guncotton. Before going for it to the guncotton dry-house, I instituted a search for a suitable vessel in which to carry it. For some mysterious reason I had much difficulty in finding anything just adapted to my purpose, and the hunt delayed me a matter of five minutes or more. Finally, however, I secured a satisfactory vessel, and hurried out of the door in the direction of the dry-house.... I had covered less than a rod of the distance when the dry-house blew up.
In this instance, surely, a benign Providence interfered to save me from destruction.
Some years ago, soon after I had built my experimental laboratory near Lake Hopatcong, a dear old friend came to visit me. He had seen hard times in the interval that had separated us, and had suffered from both business reverses and ill health since the days when he and I were chums. He was plunged in the depths of pessimism, while I was optimistic. He was in the throes of abject discouragement. Though I made him many offers of assistance in varied forms, none of them seemed to cheer him in the least.
When I knew him in our youth, he had been one of the bravest men that ever lived; now, he appeared to have lost all his former courage. Often, however, he made the remark that he was minded to make an end of everything, since life offered him nothing worth while. I frequently importuned him against the folly of contemplating suicide.
It came about that one day I was in need of fulminate of mercury. As this material cannot be taken upon a train or sent by express, it was necessary to go for it with horse and wagon. Both my assistants and myself were just then too busy to be spared from the work in hand. So, it occurred to me that my old friend would be exactly the person to send on the quest. Since he was even then engaged in meditating suicide, he would not be in the least afraid of fetching the stuff for me. Of course, I should not have thought of sending him had I believed there was any particular danger. Certainly there would be none if the material were handled properly, and in a wet state.
My old friend started on the mission valorously enough, but he lost his courage presently, and returned empty-handed.
I then sent one of my helpers, a spare man who worked for me occasionally, as he had been long connected with the manufacture and handling of explosives. I gave him the necessary money for the purchase of the material, for the hire of the team and his other expenses, and as there would be two or three dollars over, I told him he could spendthat in any way he liked, for his own use and behoof.
He returned along toward evening, left the horse and wagon at the stable, and started up to the works with a bag containing ten pounds of fulminate, placed in a small hand-valise. Fortunately I saw him coming soon after he had abandoned the vehicle.
The road was altogether too narrow for him; the ground seemed to reel under his feet, and he was steadying himself by swinging the valise back and forth from side to side with great violence. A drunker man never walked.
I took the valise away from him, and carried it to the works myself. The next day, when we opened it, we found that instructions had not been followed about wetting the fulminate. The bag of dry fulminate had, when he procured it, been merely set in a pail of water for a few minutes, and only long enough to wet a thin stratum of the explosive, leaving the whole interior perfectly dry.
It is surely a wonder that the drunken man had not exploded this mass of dry fulminate in the rough handling he had given it. Had he fallen with the bag, he must almost certainly have caused an explosion by the shock of the impact of the fulminate against the ground.
At another time, I required some very pure nitroglycerin. As this material, like the fulminate of mercury, could not be transported by either freight or express, it was necessary to go and bring it over by horse and wagon, or by automobile. I decided to go and fetch it myself with my automobile, which, at that time, was a Haynes-Apperson of one of the early makes. That machine had the faculty of going wrong oftener and in more places than any other piece of machinery I ever saw or heard of.
It had a very short wheel base, and, as the steering gear had worn so much that there was a good deal of lost motion, it required very great skill to keep the car in the road. No sooner would it be brought in line with the highway than it would immediately proceed toward the ditch or some wall or tree. It swayed from side to side of the road like a drunken man, and it was necessary, inorder to keep it in the road at all, to calculate an average with it.
As it was quite a long drive to where I was to procure the nitroglycerin, I went into New York and brought out a young chauffeur from the Haynes-Apperson Company, explaining to him fully why I wanted him, and for what I was going. I made him understand that I did not want him to start to accompany me unless he had the courage to stand by me to the end. He was all courage; bravery seemed to ooze out of him at every pore.
When we started on our journey, early the next morning, I found that he was wholly unable to steer the automobile. He could not keep it in the road at all, and I had to drive it all the way myself; but, as he understood the machine and how to repair it, I concluded that he might prove valuable on that account. And he did, for during the outgoing and return trip, that old machine broke down three times, and the tires went flat four times.
On arrival at the factory, I let the chauffeur wait while I went to procure the nitroglycerin. I took a lot of bicarbonate of soda with me, with which I absorbed the nitroglycerin, forming a sort of paste. This rendered it safe to handle, and, by placing it in water, I could at any time dissolve out the bicarbonate of soda, and leave the pure nitroglycerin.
When I had prepared fifty pounds of nitroglycerin in this manner, placed it in glass jars and rolled them up with several thicknesses of felt covering material, I had them taken up to the automobile and placed in the rear part of it.
I then told the young chauffeur that I was ready to proceed, but he said that he had been talking with the men in the office, and that they had told him that they would not ride with Mr. Maxim in that automobile with that nitroglycerin for all the money in the world. They had frightened the fellow nearly out of his wits. It was with much persuasion and reasoning and insistence that I finally got him to consent to get into the car with me and ride along a very smooth even road to the skirts of the town, letting him believe that he could there escape, and that I would proceed alone.
When we got a little out of the town, I reminded him of his agreement to stick withme, and told him that it would be out of the question for me to attempt to proceed alone without an assistant, as I had but one hand, and could not repair the machine very well if anything should go wrong. But he was deaf to all entreaties.
Then I told him, with highly colored emphasis and significant gestures, that, should he not proceed with me, as he had agreed, I might prove then and there more dangerous to his comfort and well-being than the nitroglycerin—and I kept him with me!
After having traveled a few miles, the chauffeur began to recover his courage, and I had no more trouble with him.
As I was ascending a steep grade along a narrow road, on the return trip, I saw a big touring car bearing down upon me, with a party of four young men and two young women in it. They were traveling like the wind. I turned out of the road as far as I possibly could, and stopped my car, and signaled with my hand to them to slow down, pointing to the narrowness of the road.
They gave little heed to this, and rushed by me like a tornado, coming so close thatthey could not have missed my machine, hub to hub, more than an inch.
There is little consolation in the fact that, had they struck us, they never would have known how foolish a thing they had done.
A chemist friend of mine once invented a process of converting nitro-benzole into tri-nitro-benzole by a very quick and labor-saving method, which consisted in mixing the nitro-benzole with nitric acid, confining the mixture in a large, strong, steel cylinder, then gradually heating the cylinder until the required pressure should be produced, which was expected to effect the desired reaction.
Accordingly, five hundred pounds of nitro-benzole was mixed with the necessary quantity of nitric acid of the requisite strength, and the heating process was begun.
While anxiously watching this infernal machine, my friend saw a peculiar blue flame emerge from the seam around the head. Being of an alert nature, and able to take a hint without being kicked by an elephant, he withdrew from the vicinity of that cylinder. He did not merely sidle away from the perilous place—he fairly flew with an alacrityborn of desperation. He had barely emerged from the laboratory when there was a terrific explosion that leveled the building, and formed an enormous crater in the earth where he had stood, the concussion knocking him senseless. And, today, he still swears, with solemn earnestness, that a freight car could have been buried in the hole that was blown in the ground when his pet project went off.
This experience so impressed him that he concluded that explosive compounds possess properties which place them in a class by themselves, and that it is a good class to avoid.
During the experiments with Maximite at Sandy Hook, previous to its purchase and adoption by the United States Government, I was loading some shell in a small house, near where a ten-inch gun was being fired. About a year or so before, when a ten-inch gun of this particular make was being tested at Sandy Hook, the breech block blew out, went through the bomb-proof, and killed several officers and men.
Having completed my work, I started up the railroad track in the direction of the steamboat landing, to return home, when there came the ring of the bell for another discharge of the cannon. As the breech of the gun was pointing in my direction, I recalled the above fatality; but I reasoned with myself that, as a large number of tests had since been made with these guns, and as the defect in the breech mechanism was supposed to have been corrected, the chance of the breech blowing out at thisparticular discharge and coming my way was infinitely small.
Nevertheless, I thought, it is exactly on such occasions that the unexpected does happen. So I ran for all I was worth up the track and off at one side. Then I heard the report of the gun, and looking around, saw that sure enough the breech block had blown out, and saw it pass through a building in its path. I saw it strike the track over which I had been walking, cut a rail off, saw it strike the old stone fort beyond me, and ricochet high into the air.
There was an immediate shower of stones and débris falling around me, which I dexterously dodged. On examining the small house where I had been charging the Maximite shell I found that the windows were fairly riddled with pieces of smokeless powder, which had been blown from the breech of the gun.
Among the many dynamite plants that hang upon the verdant hills of the American countryside, there is one which stands somewhat apart from the railroad, and the dynamite has to be carted to the station over the highway. At one point the highway passes close to the edge of a precipice of considerable height, at the bottom of whose abrupt, ragged sides nestles a pleasant villa, owned by a wealthy business man.
A friend of mine, who told me the story, had just paid a visit to this factory of explosives, and was walking leisurely along the road. At a distance of perhaps a hundred yards ahead of him there was one of the dynamite wagons, moving two tons of dynamite to the railroad. The driver had recently purchased a couple of fresh horses, which he pronounced “a spanking pair.” They were rather restive and shied at everything they saw. But the driver was a bravefellow and a strong one, and he had no fear of being unable to control them.
All at once, under the impulse of a gust of wind, a newspaper flared up in front of them. Quick as a flash, they bolted, rushing headlong, the bits held firmly between their teeth; while the high-piled load of dynamite swayed from side to side menacingly as the wagon took the curves of the road.
At this instant the foreman of the dynamite-works flashed by, driving a pair of horses to an empty wagon. He had observed the plight of the driver of the dynamite wagon, and was lashing his horses in mad pursuit.
Although the foreman’s team was inferior, still his wagon was empty, and he was soon neck and neck with the runaway horses. For several hundred yards it was a close race, neither achieving any appreciable advantage over the other. Nearer and nearer were they coming to the precipice, which yawned just where the road turned sharply to the right. Still on and on they flew, when, in a moment of advantage, the foreman leaped from his wagon, full upon the neck and head of the nigh horse of the runaway pair, andbrought the team to a standstill within less than fifty feet of the precipice, and directly over the villa I have mentioned.
Had not this foreman possessed both the presence of mind and the athletic qualifications necessary, coupled with great daring, that load of dynamite must inevitably have gone over the precipice as the horses struck that curve. Little the peaceful occupants of the villa under the hill imagined what a calamity at that fearful moment overhung them!
An editor in a large Western mining city once hit upon a happy expedient for getting rid of obnoxious callers. To this end, he filled a gunpowder keg with ashes, inserted a fuze, piled a handful of black gunpowder around it, to give the whole an air of reality, and established the arrangement on a table in his ante-room. On the advent of certain bores, the office boy followed instructions by lighting the fuze, and walking out of the room with the audible remark:
“I’m goin’ to blow up that old guy in there!”
The thing proved its worth as an automatic bouncer, until, on a memorable day, a long-haired, calf-eyed, dreamy-looking young male person came into the place, who informed the office boy that he desired to see the editor. He explained in cadenced speech that he deigned to exhibit to the editor a poetic effusion, the lucubration of a finefrenzy, fairly oozing divine afflatus, on the Surplusage of Over-Soul in Young Maidens.
On hearing his minion’s report concerning the visitor, the editor told the boy to light the fuze and to ask the poet to sit down; that the editor would see him in half an hour.
When the editor went out into the ante-room the fuze had burned out, the surface gunpowder had flashed off, but the poet was still sitting there.
I was once called as an expert to visit a dynamite plant where a new kind of high explosive was being manufactured instead of the ordinary nitroglycerin dynamite. It consisted of a mixture of chlorate of potash, sulphur, charcoal and paraffin wax. Its inventor had given it the reassuring name of Double X Safety Dynamite.
A quarry-man in a nearby town had, with his safety-ignoring habitude, attempted to load a hole with the stuff, using a crowbar as a rammer, with the result that he set off the charge, and the crowbar went through his head.
This unscheduled eventuation aroused the apprehension of the president of the company, who was also its backer. He began to grow suspicious about the safety of the material. Being so much interested, he went with me on my visit of inspection.
We left the train at a siding about a mile from the works, and had just started in theirdirection when there came a sudden boom and roar, and the earth shook. Over the powder works there rose a huge column of black smoke, flaring wide into the sky.
We found a great crater where the mixing house had stood. Three men were working in the building when the explosion occurred. A fortunate survivor who had left the place a moment before to go for a bucket of drinking water, was walking about the crater, apparently searching for something among the scattered remnants. As we approached him, he sadly said:
“I can’t find much of the boys. I guess you’ll have to plow the ground if you want to bury them.”
Several years ago, at the works of the American Forcite Company, a batch of nitrogelatin blew up in process of manufacture and several men were killed. One laborer who was working so close to where the explosion occurred that his clothing was nearly all blown off and he was spattered with the blood of his companions and crazed by the shock, started in a wild and aimless run along the road, with his tattered garments flying in the wind.
A woman of the neighborhood, whose husband was employed at the works, intercepted him with the eager inquiry:
“Is anyone killed?”
“Yes, yes!” said he, “We are all killed! Every one of us is killed!”
And it was some time before he could be convinced that he was not among the dead.
Motorite consists of a compound of about seventy per cent. nitroglycerin and thirty per cent. gelatinated guncotton, the mixture being compounded in such a way as to form a tough and rubbery substance. This material is made into bars, which are smoothed and varnished upon the outside and then forced into steel tubes. In use, these steel tubes are placed in an apparatus in such wise that the bar of motorite can be ignited only at the exposed end, in a combustion chamber, into which water is forced, and as the combustion is confined to that end, it proceeds with absolute uniformity, according to the pressure, and without explosion. In other words, the motorite acts as a fuel, the products of combustion serving as a flame blast, blowing the water through a series of baffle plates, atomizing it, and converting it instantly into steam. The object of motorite is to replace compressed air in the driving of motors for self-propelled torpedoes.
I have already expended more than fifty thousand dollars in experiments with motorite and on different kinds of apparatus for its use. As about four times as much energy is available for driving a torpedo by this system as by any other, I hope some time to effect arrangements for the equipment of torpedoes with it.
The first bars of motorite that I made, I formed by passing through a die. The result was that a small, microscopic flaw which could not be seen with the naked eye extended through the bars from end to end, so that, when the bar was placed in the combustion apparatus, the flame of ignition passed immediately down through the flaw, exploding the apparatus.
After the first apparatus blew up, I made another one, and, as I could not very well conduct the experiments at the place where the first mishap occurred, I hired a floor in a building to make the test. But I needed an assistant, and it was problematical where I could find one.
One day, while returning home, I was accosted by a panhandler, a young man claiming to have just arrived from Pittsburg, seeking work. I told him that if he was actually looking for work I had a job for him, and I bade him come right along with me. I took him home that night, fed him, and watched him.
The next morning we went down to the shop. I explained to him all about the nature of the experiment that I was about to try, and told him that, if he had any timidity, the time to abscond was then and there. He told me that he was not afraid of anything, if I was not.
“Very well, then,” I said, “I do not expect the thing to blow up; otherwise, I would not be here.”
I got my time-watch ready, and told him to press the electric button to ignite the motorite. Instantly there was a terrific explosion. The windows were blown out into the street, and pieces of the shattered apparatus were driven into the ceiling and into the wall all about us; but fortunately neither of us was hit.
John looked calmly about him fora moment, and then at me, and remarked:
“God, she busted!”
While we were recovering from our amazement, half a dozen policemen rushed into the place, accompanied by a priest. I explained the mishap the best way I could, and, seeing that the priest was a handsome, genial, good-natured fellow, I appealed to him. He had a little chat with the policemen, and they all left.
I sent that priest a box of the best cigars that I could buy.
Under the counsel and advice of the landlord I then moved away from there.
I next bought a house, and in the back yard I built a laboratory with no windows or doors in it, except a skylight at the top and the windows and doors that fronted my house. The walls were of brick, and made thick. The skylight at the top was a large one, and was arranged to open up full size. Special precautions were taken by means of various attachments to cause the roof to stay on in case of emergency.
A new apparatus was made and erected and got ready to test. This time my wife was my assistant, and we arranged to touchthe thing off by electricity from the house. Again it exploded, and one of the fragments of the apparatus, coming through the open door, struck the wooden wall behind which my wife and I were standing and nearly passed through it.
On entering the laboratory, I discovered for the first time what was the actual cause of the trouble, namely, the longitudinal flaw already referred to, evidenced by the fragments of the motorite that remained after the explosion, for motorite, like smokeless gunpowder, when subjected to explosive pressure, is immediately extinguished upon the release of the pressure, so that when the apparatus blew up, all of the unconsumed motorite was extinguished, just as when the projectile leaves the gun any unburned smokeless powder is extinguished and is blown out in front of the gun, where the partially consumed grains may be recovered.
The next motorite was made by rolling the material into sheets, cutting into discs, sealing them together under pressure, and in that way building up the bars, which precluded the possibility of there being any flaws.
Some motorite was soon made in this manner, and another apparatus constructed, which was tested and which worked very satisfactorily.
Following this successful result, I built a laboratory at a dynamite plant near Lake Hopatcong for conducting the experiments on a larger scale.
My assistant at the motorite laboratory was one of that American country type, absolutely honest, perfectly fearless, painstaking and diligent, of such timber as the great men of the earth are made. He was altogether a most lovable fellow. He had all his life worked with explosives, and was a veteran in the manufacture and use of nitroglycerin and dynamite. But, when doing pioneer work with explosives, there is always an unavoidable element of risk, even when the greatest care is taken.
We at first had the hydraulic press, in which we built up the sticks of motorite, located in the laboratory room itself; but I suggested to my assistant one day that it had better be placed outside, and a heavy brick wall built between us and the press, as a barricade in case of a possible accident.
“For,” I said, “suppose you should by oversight neglect to put in the leather packing between the piston and the motorite, we might have an explosion.”
He said that he could hardly forget that precaution. Nevertheless, the press was placed outside, and the barricade built. The very first time that we used the press thereafter he did forget the packing, with the result that the press exploded. Although we were behind the barricade, still the concussion brought us to our knees. Had the explosion occurred while the press was being operated in the main laboratory, we should both have certainly been very seriously injured, if not killed.
It was a matter of several months before the full-sized torpedo apparatus with which we were to experiment was completed and erected, and the necessary quantity of motorite made.
On the day before the regular test was to be conducted, I was called to Morristown, as expert on a case in court, and I left orders with my assistant to make up an additional small quantity of sealing compound, used for sealing the discs of motorite together inbuilding up the bars. This sealing material was made of a mixture of nitroglycerin, guncotton, camphor and acetate of amyl.
As I did not receive the telegram to go to Morristown until after I left home that morning, my wife expected that I would be working at the laboratory that day, but knew that I might possibly have a call to Morristown.
On my way home that evening, I was informed by a neighbor that there had been an explosion in my laboratory, that my assistant had been killed, and that the place had been burned down. I hastened to the spot and found my wife there waiting for me. All that was left of my assistant lay in an adjacent building covered with a piece of sacking.
That was one of the saddest moments of my whole life. It is impossible to know what little slip or misjudgment may have produced the explosion. A little inadvertence in the handling of a bottle of nitroglycerin may have been the cause.
The manner in which my wife was informed of the accident was about on a par with that employed by the Irishman whotook the remains of a fellow-workman, killed by an explosion, home to his wife in a wheelbarrow, and, knocking upon the door, asked:
“Does the widdy McGinnis live here?”
She replied: “Indade, and I’m not a widdy.”
And he said: “And faith ye are, for I have his rimnants here in the wheelbarry with me.”
A butcher was the messenger-bearer to Mrs. Maxim. He said:
“Mrs. Maxim, have you heard the news about the explosion?”
And he continued: “Mr. Maxim’s laboratory blew up and burned down today. They have found some of his assistant, but they haven’t found any of Mr. Maxim yet.”
Mrs. Maxim immediately rushed to the scene of the accident, where she learned the welcome news that I was in Morristown that day.
It was a matter of another year of hard work before I was again ready to make a new trial of the torpedo apparatus. There were several amusing experiences in connection with that testing.
The apparatus held a charge of one hundred and ten pounds of motorite. Water was pumped continuously through a water jacket over the steel cylinders containing the burning motorite and into the combustion chamber during each run. The apparatus was provided with an exhaust valve so constructed as to control, to a nicety, the pressure in the combustion chamber.
Under three hundred pounds pressure to the square inch, which was what was mainly used, the motorite burned at the rate of a foot in length per minute, and as each foot in length weighed twenty-five pounds, it burned at the rate of twenty-five pounds per minute. Each pound of motorite evaporated a little more than two pounds of water, and the products of combustion, mingling with the steam produced, escaped from the exhaust valve through an inch-and-a-half nozzle.
The roar of the escaping gas and steam was so great that it was impossible to hear one shout at the top of his voice. The loudest shout was less than a whisper. The roar could be heard with great distinctness more than two miles away. A good idea can behad of the violence with which the steam and gases escaped, from the fact that a door, which accidentally swung shut during one of the runs in front of the nozzle, although seven feet distant, was blown from its hinges, broken in two, and the fragments hurled twenty feet away. The noise was so confounding, that it was some time before my assistants and myself could keep our senses about us and note and record the pressures on the various gauges during a run, although the apparatus was separated from us by a barricade so strong and heavy that there was no possibility of our being injured, even should there be an explosion.
One day, just as we were about to make a run, the superintendent of a nearby explosives works called upon us, and I asked him if he would like to see the run, and he said he would.
I then asked him to note particularly and to record the pressure on a certain gauge. The run lasted about five minutes and, on turning to him for his notes, he himself was surprised that he had been so confounded by the noise that he had not thought of looking at the gauge at all.
On the day when the final test took place, the firm of torpedo-builders that was interested with me in the apparatus sent several representatives, including their chief engineer, vice-president and other officers of the company, to witness the test. Everything being in readiness, and each member of the committee being convinced that there was no possible danger in remaining in proximity to the apparatus and back of the barricade, while it was being tested, I gave each of the committee explicit instructions to watch the various gauges and to note the pressures, while the chief engineer and myself were to watch the nozzle gauge, and to observe the character and force of the steam and gases escaping from the nozzle.
I told the several members of the committee it was indispensable that they should carefully watch the pressure gauges during the entire run. As it was a condition of the test that I should get up steam within ten seconds, the chief engineer stood ready with his stop-watch when the electric button was pressed to ignite the motorite.
As the action was instantaneous, that is to say, as steam was got up practically instantaneously and was escaping at the nozzle under full head as quickly as a gun could be fired, he did not think of his stop-watch, and it was some little time before I could get him to look at the pressure gauge on the nozzle, so as to observe the character of the escaping steam. His eyes had a blank, meaningless look, but it must be confessed that he had the grit to stand there. Not so, however, with the other members of the committee. Each of them was far more interested in his own individual run than he was in the run of the apparatus, for not one of them was in sight when the run was completed. They came straggling back sheepishly, but no urging sufficed to bring them near the apparatus during any of the succeeding runs.
In the old days when the Indians were sometimes troublesome on the Western frontier, an officer in the regular army, who was rather an ingenious fellow, conceived the idea of making a mountain gun out of a mule and the barrel of a common field-piece, using the mule for the carriage. He therefore had the gun securely mounted on the back of the beast.
They had not proceeded far with this novel battery, when a small knot of hostile savages was espied quietly eating their midday meal within easy range. The mounted gun was forthwith loaded heavily with grape and canister, the mule taken by the head and pointed in the direction of the Indians. A short piece of fuze that had been placed in the touch-hole of the gun was ignited.
The mule, hearing the sizzing of the fuze, began to rear and snort and kick and whirl about, while the officer and his men scudded to cover, and flattened themselves out uponthe ground. They had not long to wait when there was a terrific crash. The gun had exploded under the overcharge, with the utter demolition of the mule carriage.
The Indians, hearing the report, looked quickly about them, and seeing the fragments of an exploded mule rocketing through the air, were frightened nearly out of their wits, and fled precipitately.
When I was a young man I taught several terms of school in Maine, where, in the small country districts, the teacher is expected to be a walking encyclopedia of information.
One day there came a loud knock upon the door of the schoolhouse. On going out to see what was the cause of the imperative summons, I found standing there the wife of one of the neighbors, white as a sheet with agitation and alarm. She excitedly told me that her little boy, Gussie, had just swallowed a bullet, and she asked me what she should do for him.
“Why,” said I pleasantly, “Give him a good charge of gunpowder. But be careful not to point him toward anybody.”
She went home and gave him a dose of gunpowder, without ever seeing the joke.
A contractor, who does business up in New York State, told me the following story:
A carload of nitroglycerin dynamite had been shipped to him, but was held up in a freight-house for a day or two before delivery to him. One night while it was there, the freight-house took fire. Hearing the fire-alarm and looking out, he was astounded to see that it was the freight-house burning. Believing that his carload of dynamite would be sure to explode, he started to run to the scene in all haste, to warn the firemen and others to keep far away from the inevitable explosion, when, suddenly, there was a great burst of flame, which shot high into the sky and flared out bright and wild in all directions, sending up an enormous column of smoke. But this fierce combustion lasted only a few minutes, and then subsided.
He knew that his dynamite had burned up, and, curiously enough, without exploding.
He met the fire chief after the conflagration, and they spoke of the fire. The chief remarked that there must have been some very combustible freight on one of the cars. He said that, when the fire first started, the firemen played a full stream of water on this car, but it did not do any good. The car burned so fast and so fierce that they had to rush away for their lives, or they would have been consumed by the intense heat, and he wondered what it could be that would burn so fiercely.
When told that it was a carload of dynamite, he felt like a man who discovers the next day that he had, during the night, walked along the sheer edge of a high precipice.
Although dynamite in such quantities as a carload when ignited is almost certain to explode instead of merely burning, still, sometimes, even that quantity will take fire and burn up completely without exploding; while, at other times, a single stick of dynamite when ignited will detonate.
One of the old importers of picric acid in this country told me the following story:
He sold about five tons of picric acid to a manufacturer of dynamite doing business at a certain place up the Hudson, for employment as an ingredient in a particular kind of high explosive.
Not being very familiar with picric acid and the character of the exploder necessary to detonate it, the purchaser had poor success with it, and he called upon the importer with the grievance that he had been sold such a poor lot of picric acid that it was actually non-explosive, and was therefore practically worthless, and he wanted the seller to take it back immediately.
The importer could not convince him that he was mistaken, although he insisted that it was only necessary to know how to explode it, and that, when properly detonated, it wasone of the most powerful explosives in the world.
“No,” said the purchaser, “that picric acid you have sent me is not an explosive.”
He admitted he knew that picric acid was recognized as a very powerful explosive; but he was sure of one thing—that the picric acid that had been sent him was not an explosive.
“Why,” said he, “it is no more explosive than sand, and I want you to take it back.”
“All right,” said the importer, “you may return me a sample of it, and I will submit it to the requisite tests, and if it proves an inferior lot I will take it back.”
That day, during the purchaser’s absence, some workmen were moving a barrel of the picric acid in order to let a plumber mend a small leak in a lead pipe, which supplied the place with water. Over and about this lead pipe had been spilled a considerable quantity of picric acid, which had formed picrate of lead with the lead pipe.
The friction from the barrel set off this picrate of lead, which in turn detonated the picric acid; and the whole five tons went offwith such violence as amply to demonstrate its explosive qualities.
The following day the purchaser returned to the importer with the complaint that that picric acid sold him was the most sensitive, most violent and treacherous explosive material in the world.
The importer laughed, and reminded him of their previous conversation. But, as the dynamite factory had been demolished and several men killed, the purchaser did not respond very readily to the humor of the situation.
Possibly it may not be diverging too much from dynamite stories to tell of an experience of mine with a steam-cooker, which I invented away back in the eighties.
In this cooker I was able to roast and bake by superheated steam. Sometimes it worked very well. At other times the safety valve gave me a great deal of trouble, being altogether too uncertain in its action.
One day I was sitting alone in the kitchen, steam-roasting a turkey, when dispossessed Bridget, who was waiting in an adjoining room, opened the kitchen door, and took a sly peep at me. I was endeavoring to convince her that the thing was perfectly safe, when, of a sudden, that cooker blew up. The kitchen windows were blown out, the door ripped off its hinges, and the stove demolished.
Fortunately, none of the fragments found either Bridget or me. The oven portion ofthe cooker, containing the turkey, went upstairs somewhere, through the ceiling. Later developments showed that the turkey had gone to bed in the room over the kitchen.
That cooker was my first patent.
We had a neighbor, when I was a young man down in Maine, by the name of Bill Bennett, a hard-working farmer, who was very proud of his pile of dry hard wood, which he had prepared for the winter’s cold.
Late in the autumn, however, the wood began to disappear faster than he thought it ought. He was sure that someone was stealing it, and inasmuch as his nearest neighbors had no store of wood whatsoever, and, too, were notoriously shiftless, he concluded that they must be the pilferers.
A little bit of detective work that he practiced to ascertain the truth of his conclusions was certainly ingenious and worked well.
Bennett took a dozen sticks of wood, and bored a large hole in the end of each of them, which he filled with rifle powder, putting about a pound into each stick. He then plugged the holes skillfully to conceal theevidences of his work, sawing off a short bit of the plugged end of each stick, so that the plug would not show, and distributed these sticks upon the part of the pile that was shrinking. He was careful to select the wood for his own burning from another portion of the heap.
The following evening he was looking from his window toward the house of the neighbors, wondering how long it would be before his ingenuity bore fruit, when suddenly there was a flash, a crash and a roar, followed by screams of “Murder!” and “Fire!”
The mystery had been solved.
This Bill Bennett was a good deal of a marksman, and one day while attending a county fair, where he had imbibed a considerable measure of bottled-up unsteadiness, he came reeling along to a group of men who were engaged in shooting at a target. The range was long, and the price paid by each contestant for a chance to display his skill, or lack of it, was a dollar a shot, but the prize was a fat ox, which was destined to go to the first who made a bull’s-eye. As yet none had succeeded in making the lucky shot.
Bill staggered into position, and threw down a ten-dollar bill for ten shots. The attendants steadied him sufficiently to confine his wild target practice to that part of the sky and horizon where the target was located.
Bill had wasted nine shots without coming within speaking distance of the target, which to his drunken sight appeared to be double.Rolling like a ship in a storm, Bill brought the gun to his shoulder for the last round, declaring, “By gum, I’m agoing to hit one of them targets this time.”
And he did. As they went sailing by, he let blaze at them, and behold, it was a bull’s-eye! Bill had won the ox on a one-to-a-million chance.
In the old pioneer days of Maine, when it was still a province of Massachusetts, a young French officer had an altercation with the chief of the Oldtown Indians, and according to the custom of the times, challenged the Red Man to fight a duel with him.
The old Indian, according to the courtesies of the game, was allowed the choice of weapons, and he chose two kegs of gunpowder. Each was to sit upon a keg, with the bung out. Then two pistols were to be discharged in succession. On the firing of the first pistol, two iron pokers, heated to a white heat, were to be laid upon a table beside the duelists, which was to be immediately followed by the discharge of the second pistol. At this signal they were each to seize a poker and thrust it into the bung-hole of the keg on which his adversary was sitting, the old Indian calculating that he would be quicker than the Frenchman.
But the Frenchman had a little calculation of his own, and he figured out something that the Indian had doubtless not thought of. This was that the explosion of either keg would be certain to explode the other.
But he made a bluff of it, thinking that the old Indian too might be bluffing, and so everything was arranged. Each mounted his respective keg and the first pistol was fired. The savage was a graven image, but the Frenchman did not wait for the second signal, and unlike Lot’s wife, he never looked back.
My father used to tell a good story about a one-time chief of the Oldtown Indians, and, as it had to do in a way with explosions—indeed, a series of them—I add it to my collection.
There was a farmer living in an adjacent town, who frequently received visits from the old chief. On such occasions, the Red Man always carried his shotgun with him. The weapon, according to the times, was a flintlock, single-barreled muzzle-loader.
One day in the autumn, the farmer was feeding his turkeys by stringing a long line of corn upon the ground, on either side of which the turkeys were standing, head to head, in two opposing ranks for the feeding. The Indian was present, and the farmer asked his guest what he would give for a shot at that double line of turkeys’ heads. The Indian answered that he would give five dollars, if he could have every turkey that he killed or wounded. The farmer, who hadpreviously drawn the shot from the Indian’s gun, leaving only the powder charge, accepted the offer.
The Indian leveled his gun and fired; but not a turkey fell. The old Red Man looked puzzled. The farmer laughed at his marksmanship, but the old savage merely grunted, and went home.
The chief appeared again next day, and the farmer asked him how he would like to take another shot, having again drawn off a charge of shot from the Indian’s gun. He would gladly give another five dollars for a try. This time the discharge of the gun brought down a goodly number of turkeys. The Indian had taken the precaution of loading his gun with a double charge of shot. On the next visit received from the Indian, the farmer unloaded the gun down to the powder charge, then put in a wad of punk, and another powder charge with another wad of punk, and so on, until he had loaded the weapon nearly to the muzzle. He then replaced the gun in its position in the corner, dropped a fire-coal into the muzzle, and invited the Indian to supper.
After the lapse of a few minutes, the Indian’s gun went off, bang! Much surprised, the Indian looked around, and remarked that it was a strange occurrence, that he had never before known his gun to go off by itself. While he was still cogitating over the strange occurrence, bang! went the old gun again.
The Indian hurried through his supper, very greatly perturbed, but he had not quite finished when the old gun spoke yet once again. The chief rose from the table hurriedly, seized his ancient weapon, and started off for home with as nearly a display of agitation as is permissible to the dignity of the Red Man. Before he had gone far, however, the old gun uttered another bang! He then broke into a rapid run, and just as he arrived at his wigwam, the gun banged again. Now thoroughly frightened, he hurled it from him over a fence. Still, for more than two hours the Indian’s weapon continued its mysterious barking.
When the farmer explained the trick to the old chief, he felt that he had been somewhat compensated for the loss of his turkeys.