[Illustration]
DYNAMITE STORIES
AND
SOME INTERESTING FACTS
ABOUT EXPLOSIVES
BY
HUDSON MAXIM
Author of "Defenseless America," "The Science
of Poetry and the Philosophy of Language," etc.
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
HEARST'S INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY CO.
Copyright, 1916, by
HUDSON MAXIM
_All rights reserved, including that of translation into the foreign
languages, including the Scandinavian_
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.
DEDICATION
To the actors in the comedies and tragedies of real life presented in
these stories, without whose efforts and sacrifices the stories could
not have been so interesting and true, this volume is with grateful
acknowledgments most respectfully dedicated. As the parts played by the
actors were not rehearsed, the performances have required a little
retouching in the interest of the reader, the author having subordinated
history to story rather than story to history.
HUDSON MAXIM.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
THE FORGOTTEN BIT OF FULMINATE 25
HELL SWAZEY BREAKS UP THE DANCE 29
THE POET'S UPLIFT 34
HOW BENDER LOWERED THE PRICE OF DYNAMITE 39
FOOLHARDY KRUGER 42
DISCHARGING PAT 45
LINES TO A LADY 47
HE SEPARATED 50
THE WELL-DIGGER'S CASUALTIES 53
THE RIVAL EDITORS 55
THE PASSING OF "JEOPARDY" 58
THE INVOLUNTARY ATTACK 59
HOIST WITH HIS OWN PETARD 62
THE FORGOTTEN PRECAUTION 64
THE FATAL HAT 67
A DROP TOO MUCH 68
A CLOSE CALL 70
A PICKANINNY'S TREASURE TROVE 72
NOT TO BE BUNCOED 73
SIR FREDERICK'S BONFIRE 76
THE IRREVERENT NATIVE 79
AT FOLLY'S MERCY 80
THE WATCHMAN'S DOUBLE VISION 82
THE ZEALOUS FOOL 84
SOME LIVELY COTTON WASTE 87
SAVING TIME 88
THE BROKEN SCALE 90
THE SINGULAR GOOD FORTUNE OF A GENTLE
ENGLISHMAN 92
THE MATCH AT THE PEEP-HOLE 94
THE FLASK OF LIQUOR 96
IMPERTINENCE PUNISHED 97
CURIOSITY'S UPLIFT 99
PROUD EVEN UNTO DEATH 101
THE DOG THAT ATE DYNAMITE 104
INSECURE SECURITY 106
THE LOADED CHINAMAN 108
LIVING BOMBS 110
SHIPS THAT PASSED IN THE NIGHT 112
A WILD PROJECTILE 114
THE BOMB AND THE TRAIN 115
THE MISSING VESSEL 117
THE DRUNKEN MESSENGER 118
NITROGLYCERIN BY AUTOMOBILE 122
THE JETS OF BLUE 127
THE WISDOM OF RETREAT 129
THE RACE WITH DEATH 131
THE INDOMITABLE POET 134
SCATTERED 136
A LIVELY DEAD ONE 138
INCIDENTS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF MOTORITE 139
THE MULE GUN 152
HOW GUSSIE GOT LOADED 154
DYNAMITE'S FREAK 155
EXPLOSIVE VAGARIES 157
THE TURKEY THAT WENT TO BED 160
BILL BENNETT, DETECTIVE 162
WINNING THE OX 164
A DUEL TO THE DEATH 166
THE BEWITCHED FLINTLOCK 168
WHEN HE SHIRKED 171
THE ELEVATION OF WOMANHOOD 173
DIDN'T KNOW IT WAS LOADED 178
THE WRONG TAP 180
"WHENCE ALL BUT HIM HAD FLED" 182
BREAKING HIS NERVE 184
THE GRIZZLY CANNON BALL 186
THE JOKE WAS NOT ON THE CHINAMEN 188
CHINESE FIREWORKS 190
BROWN, THE GUNNER 193
THE HAPPENING OF THE UNEXPECTED 195
WHEN THE WASH VANISHED 207
THE FRIGHTENED FISHERMAN 211
THE COLONEL WAS PROVOKED 213
WHEN THE DARKIES TURNED PALE 215
THE DOG THAT WAS A REAL MASCOT 218
WEARY WILLIE'S DISCOMFITURE 220
LO, THE POOR INDIAN! 224
DYNAMITE STORIES
INTRODUCTION
SOME INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT EXPLOSIVES
An explosive material consists of a combustible and of an oxidizing
agent for burning the combustible. Hence it contains within its own
substance the necessary oxygen for its combustion, so that it will burn
without atmospheric air and therefore in a confined space.
There are two main kinds of explosive materials--high explosives and
gunpowder. There are also two main kinds of high explosives--dynamites
and military high explosives. Lastly there are two main kinds of
gunpowders--black, smoky gunpowder and smokeless gunpowder.
Dynamite is used mostly for commercial blasting purposes, such as
blasting rock in the construction of railways, and so forth. Military
high explosives are mostly employed for submarine mines, warheads for
torpedoes, and as bursting charges for high explosive projectiles.
A high explosive is consumed almost instantly by what is called a
detonative wave; hence it is said to detonate. When gunpowder explodes,
it is not consumed by a detonative wave, but burns from the surface, and
the more strongly it is confined, that is to say, the higher the
pressure under which it is burned, the more rapid is its combustion.
Although the action is rapid, it is yet much slower than is the action
of detonation of high explosives.
The name gunpowder is a misnomer, for gunpowder is no longer a powder,
but is made in the form of hard and dense grains or sticks, according to
the use for which it is intended.
A gunpowder is smoky when its products of combustion are not all
gaseous. Only about forty-four per cent. of the products of combustion
of black gunpowder is gaseous. The rest is inert solid matter, which
makes the smoke.
The products of combustion of smokeless powder, however, are
practically all gaseous. Consequently, weight for weight, it is much
more powerful than black powder.
Black gunpowder is a mechanical mixture of charcoal, sulphur and
saltpeter, the charcoal and sulphur being the combustible elements, and
the saltpeter the oxidizing element or the element that supplies the
oxygen.
In smokeless powder the oxygen is held in chemical union with nitrogen
and hydrogen, but the bond between the nitrogen and the other elements
is weak, so that when ignited the other more active elements are enabled
easily to unite at the expense of the nitrogen.
In the combustion of all explosive materials, great heat is generated,
and the force of the explosion is dependent upon the volume of gases and
the high temperature to which they are raised.
The smokeless powder used in the United States is made by dissolving a
special kind of guncotton or nitrocellulose in ether and alcohol, just
sufficient of the solvent being used to gelatinate the nitrocellulose,
which is then stuffed through a forming die into rods. The rods are cut
into sections of about three diameters long. The die, the invention of
the writer, contains seven mandrels arranged in such wise that when the
material is forced through the die the bar is multi-perforated with
seven holes at equal distances apart. The grains or rods of smokeless
powder are then dried for use.
When burned in a cannon, all of the surfaces of the material are
practically instantly ignited by a small flash charge of black rifle
powder used for the purpose of setting fire to the charge of smokeless
powder. The combustion in the perforations causes them to become larger
and larger until the grain is all consumed. This form of grain tends
better to maintain the pressure behind the projectile in its flight
through the gun, and enables the use of larger charges of powder with
lower pressures than could otherwise be employed. In fact, it would be
impossible to use a smokeless powder made of pure nitrocellulose in big
guns without the multi-perforations.
In certain European countries where the multi-perforated powder has not
been adopted, nitroglycerin is employed, combined with the
nitrocellulose, which causes the material to burn through a greater
thickness in a given time. Thus a smokeless powder may be made without
the multi-perforations, but smokeless powders containing nitroglycerin
erode the guns and destroy them very quickly, while guns employing pure
nitrocellulose smokeless powders last much longer.
When one of our big army or navy cannon is fired, the time which elapses
from the instant of complete ignition of the powder charge to the
instant that the projectile leaves the muzzle of the gun is about the
fiftieth or the sixtieth of a second, and in that time the hard and
horn-like smokeless powder material is burned through only about a
sixteenth of an inch; hence the rate of combustion or rate of explosion
of smokeless powder in a cannon is about four inches per second, while
it has been ascertained by actual experiments that the rate of
combustion or rate of explosion of dynamite and other high explosives is
about four miles per second, so that the rate of consumption of
smokeless powder, as compared to that of a high explosive, is as are
four inches to four miles.
As the time required for the projectile to be thrown from a twelve-inch
cannon is only about the sixtieth of a second, sixty of these huge guns
could be placed side by side and fired by electricity one after the
other, while grandfather's clock is making but one tick.
Our ideas of duration are but relative. We have seen that the combustion
in a cannon, though very rapid to our senses, is actually very slow
indeed as compared with the much more rapid combustion of a high
explosive; and great as is the speed of the detonative wave, yet the
speed of the earth in its orbit is four times as great.
If a celestial giant with a huge dynamite bomb the size of the earth
itself were to approach the earth in its flight through space, and
detonate the bomb immediately behind the earth, it would take half an
hour for the bomb to explode, that is to say, it would take half an
hour, or thirty minutes, for the explosive wave to pass through the
eight thousand miles of its diameter. As the speed of the earth in its
orbit is four times as great as that of the explosive wave, the earth
would rush away, leaving the bomb about thirty thousand miles behind by
the time it had completely exploded. If the interstellar ether were a
high explosive mixture and were to be set off by the bomb, the earth
would pass on clear around the sun, and while coming back, about six
months later, would meet the explosive wave still going. It would
require nearly a year for such a detonative wave to reach our sun from
the earth.
We have seen that if the earth were a ball of dynamite, it would require
half an hour to explode. If the sun were a mass of dynamite it would
require about two and a half days to explode.
We frequently hear the theory advanced that planets and suns sometimes
explode from pent-up forces within them, and that our earth might
possibly blow up. Now, the force exerted by a high explosive is
dependent entirely upon the pressure capable of being exerted by the
gases liberated by the explosion. The pressure exerted by the most
powerful high explosives has been estimated to be about 500,000 pounds
to the square inch. Consequently, were the whole molten interior of the
earth to be replaced with dynamite and detonated, the explosion that
would follow would not lift the earth's crust. The superincumbent
weight of the earth's crust is greater than would be the pressure
exerted by the dynamite.
If it were possible to throw a projectile from the earth to the nearest
fixed star, Alpha Centauri, it would take about four years for the light
of the flash to reach that star. The sound, if it could travel through
ether, would reach there about four million years later. The projectile,
traveling more than twice as fast as sound, would reach there in about
two million years.
When one of our big twelve-inch cannon is fired, the projectile,
weighing a thousand pounds, has a muzzle energy, stated in mechanical
terms, of about 50,000 foot tons, that is to say, its energy is equal to
50,000 tons falling from a height of one foot--energy enough to lift two
25,000-ton battleships to the height of a foot.
As the projectile weighs half a ton, the energy is equal to that which
would be developed by dropping the projectile from a height of more than
twenty miles, making no account of the resistance of the atmosphere.
Dropping upon a piece of armorplate too hard and thick for the
projectile to penetrate, the heat developed would be sufficient to melt
750 pounds of cast iron.
When one of these projectiles is fired from the gun directly against
twelve-inch armorplate, which the projectile is capable of penetrating,
the hard-tempered steel plate in front of the projectile is fuzed or
rendered plastic from the heat generated by the energy of the impact,
and is forced like wax from the path of the projectile.
There are many popular errors regarding the action of explosive
materials. One of the most notable is the opinion that the action of
dynamite is downward, and that if a body of high explosive be detonated
on the surface of the earth the main effect is downward.
The exact opposite is the truth. When a mass of explosive is detonated,
it is converted practically instantly into a ball of incandescent gases
and vapors under very high pressure. When confined the gases act to
disrupt their container.
When a large steel projectile is charged with a high explosive, like
picric acid, and the explosive detonated, the walls of the projectile
are not only broken but they are also torn, twisted and shredded, and so
quick is the action that the inner surface of the metal is compressed
and densified against the outer metal.
For this reason it is easy to tell from the character of the fragments
of a projectile whether or not a high explosive or an explosive of
inferior power was employed, that is to say, whether or not the
explosion was of high order or of low order.
There is one false belief about the action of high explosives that has
been about the hardest of any to kill, and the cost of killing it has
been very expensive. Furthermore, it possesses more lives than the
proverbial nine-lived cat. This belief is that five hundred pounds or so
of dynamite exploded upon a warship or upon coast fortifications would
destroy ship or fortifications, and that a few of such large bombs of
dynamite dropped in a city would lay the city in ruins.
Upon the advent of the aeroplane and the dirigible balloon, it was
confidently believed that the aerial bomb would quickly become the most
destructive implement of warfare. It was prophesied that should war
come between England and Germany, London would soon be reduced to a heap
of ruins by bombs dropped from the German Zeppelins.
Several years before the European War broke out, I predicted that
Zeppelin bombs would not and could not by any possibility work very wide
destruction, and events have since vindicated my prediction. I pointed
out the fact that should a hundred Zeppelins visit the city of London,
once a day, for a year, returning to their base without mishap, and each
Zeppelin succeed in destroying two buildings, the destruction would just
about keep up with the growth of that city, for they build in London
sixty thousand houses a year.
We all remember the destructive powers that were predicted for the
fifteen-inch Zalinski pneumatic dynamite guns that were mounted at Sandy
Hook and at San Francisco at enormous Government expense. These guns
were capable of throwing with compressed air about six hundred pounds of
nitrogelatin to a distance of from a mile-and-a-half to two miles. It
was popularly believed that one of these bombs striking upon a huge
armorclad warship would utterly destroy it.
Also two of these guns were mounted in a sort of cruiser called the
_Vesuvius_. During the Spanish War the _Vesuvius_ was taken down to
Cuba, and in one action several of the huge bombs were thrown upon the
earthworks and fortifications of the Spanish. They succeeded merely in
mussing up the green, grassy effect. They did no material damage, for
the reason that the action of the explosive was nearly all upward into
the air.
When the pneumatic dynamite gun was promulgated, it was popularly
believed that all high explosives were exceedingly sensitive, and that
it was necessary to get them out of the gun very gently if they were to
be thrown from ordnance.
The writer was the first to dispel this folly, through the invention of
Maximite, a high explosive which will stand not only the shock of being
fired from heavy guns at high velocities, but which will also, without
exploding, stand the far greater shock of penetrating the heaviest
armorplate--armorplate as heavy as the projectile will stand to pass
through without breaking up.
While I was working upon Maximite and trying to get the Government to
adopt it, Congress appropriated the money for building an eighteen-inch
gun for testing a shell invented by Louis Gathmann, which was intended
to destroy battleships by exploding the shell on the outside of their
heavy armorplate, it being believed that if five hundred pounds of
guncotton were to be fired against the side of an armored ship and
exploded, the whole side of the ship would be blown in and the vessel
destroyed.
The gun employed by Gathmann was essentially the same type of gun as
that previously designed by me, and explained in a lecture by me before
the Royal United Service Institution of Great Britain in 1897, and
illustrated in a book of mine published the same year by Eyre &
Spottiswoode, British Government printers, except that the bore of my
gun, which was of the same weight as that of the Gathmann gun, was
greater. With my gun, however, I proposed to throw armor-piercing
projectiles, or projectiles capable of penetrating an object struck and
exploding inside of it. I did not believe that a quantity of high
explosive that could be thrown in a shell and exploded on the outside
of a heavily armored ship would destroy it, but believed it necessary
that the explosive should penetrate and explode inside the ship, and
within earthworks and fortifications in order to destroy them.
Maximite was adopted by the United States Army in 1901. It was during
that same year that the experiments were conducted with the Gathmann
shell at Sandy Hook. I attended those experiments.
Two Kruppized armorplates, each eleven-and-a-half inches thick, sixteen
feet long, and seven-and-a-half feet wide, and each weighing 47,000
pounds, were set up, one as a target for the Gathmann shell and the
other as a target for the regular United States twelve-inch Army Rifle.
Each of the plates was backed by supports to represent the same strength
as though mounted on a battleship.
The Gathmann shell weighed about eighteen hundred pounds, and carried
about five hundred pounds of guncotton, while the Government twelve-inch
shell weighed a thousand pounds and carried only twenty-three pounds of
Maximite. The Gathmann shell had a soft nose, which collapsed on the
plate at the instant before the explosion of the shell, so that the
guncotton might explode fairly against the side of the plate.
At the first shot of the Gathmann gun, the projectile struck the plate
squarely and exploded, but the only effect upon the plate was to leave a
great yellow smudge on its face. The plate was neither cracked nor
pushed back. Several more shots of the Gathmann gun were fired, and
although, under the heavy pummeling, the plate was pushed back and
broken through, up and down, it was not otherwise injured.
Then the Government twelve-inch gun was fired at the other plate. The
first shell contained nineteen pounds of high explosive, and it passed
through the plate, leaving a clean round hole, and exploded behind the
plate without breaking it. The next shell contained twenty-three pounds
of Maximite, and the fuze was timed to go off a little quicker. This
shell exploded in the plate when about two-thirds through, with the
result that a hole was blown in the plate as big as a barrel, and the
plate shattered into fragments.
One would think that these tests would suffice forever to seal the doom
of the Gathmann type of shell. Nevertheless, it matters not what Army
and Navy officers may learn by experience, or know without experience,
Congress does not know and does not understand, and depends far more
upon think-so than upon experience. The result is that Government
officers are often compelled, as in the case of the Zalinski dynamite
gun and the Gathmann shell, to waste large sums of money while they know
very well beforehand exactly what the results will be, and that the
tests will prove the devices to be abject failures. Even after the
failure of the Gathmann shell, another shell of almost identical
conception and purpose was made and tested under a Congressional
appropriation, to be relegated to the scrap-heap of failures.
It is very fortunate that things happen to be as they are in the cosmos
and that the action of a high explosive when exploding against a massive
body is to rebound from that body on the line of least resistance. It is
for this reason that more damage is not done by great explosions.
One of the biggest explosions in the history of gunpowder manufacture
occurred at Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, on the 9th of March, 1911, when
it was estimated that a thousand tons of black blasting powder blew up.
Glass was broken over a very wide area. Some glass was broken in
Chicago, about fifty miles distant.
But neither the walls nor the foundations of buildings were greatly
disturbed even but a few miles from the explosion. In the village of
Pleasant Prairie, at a distance of but two miles, although the buildings
were very much damaged the inhabitants continued to occupy them.
Early in the morning of July 30, 1916, a very large quantity, certainly
several hundred tons, of high explosive materials blew up in New York
Harbor, not far from Ellis Island. A large quantity of shrapnel
ammunition and other ammunition went up in the blast, their fragments
raining all over the surrounding water. There was but very little loss
of life, and the actual material damage to buildings in Jersey City,
Manhattan and Brooklyn was astonishingly small, except the loss from
broken glass.
Why is it, then, that so much glass is broken and at such long
distances, while the foundations and walls of buildings suffer but
little injury? Let me explain. When a quantity of high explosive
detonates, a wave of atmospheric compression is sent outward in all
directions by the explosion. It is, in fact, a huge sound wave, and
moves exactly at the speed of sound--about eleven hundred feet per
second. Of course, buildings or other structures or objects near enough
to the explosion to be struck by the expanding gases themselves, or by
the atmosphere immediately propelled forward by them like a projectile,
may be destroyed, but the area over which this action occurs is so
circumscribed that no great damage is apt to result at distances beyond
a few hundred feet.
However, the great sound wave may travel to a distance of many miles.
Consequently, as a result of the explosion just referred to, about a
million dollars' worth of glass was broken in New York City alone. One
would naturally suppose that the fragments of window glass broken in
this manner would fall inside a building, but they do not. Almost always
they fall outside into the street. The reason for this is that the wave
of compression, striking a pane of glass, forces it inward nigh to the
breaking point, and then as the wave of compression moves on, followed
by a partial vacuum, the glass, springing outward to fill the void,
breaks, and falls into the street.
An interesting incident of this great explosion was staged at Ellis
Island. There were a goodly number of immigrants on the Island at
the time, congregated from the four corners of the earth, some of
whom had come to America to seek their fortunes in this land of
freedom-from-everything-except-freedom, but many had come to find
quiet and security from war's alarums. Few of them, indeed, had
ever felt the comfort of an overcoat, but many had dreamed of some
happy day when they would sport a veritable fur-lined overcoat.
When the great explosion came it sounded like the crack of doom, and
most of the immigrants believed it to be the real thing and proceeded
with agitated precipitation to get their souls ready for rapid transit
over the Great Divide.
All eyes naturally were averted to the celestial concave, aglare with
the great conflagration, when suddenly, to the confounding amaze of all,
a large flock of fur-lined overcoats began tumbling down out of the
heavens all over the Island. It is true they were lined merely with
sheep's fur, but even such a garment is as much the pride of the
Northern European peasant as is the broad, glad-colored sombrero the
pride of the Mexican peon.
As the Government statute books and rules and regulations governing
immigrants contain no provision for the disposal of such species of
manna as heaven-sent overcoats, the immigrants were the beneficiaries.
Great as are such explosions as that at Pleasant Prairie and that in New
York Harbor, they are but little things indeed compared with the
explosions that sometimes accompany volcanic eruptions. Mother Earth is
the greatest of all explosive manufacturers.
Water seeping down into the earth's crust and trapped in large
quantities in the neighborhood of volcanoes sometimes becomes heated to
high incandescence--heated until it is no longer water or steam, but
mingled oxygen and hydrogen, far above the temperature of their
dissociation--under a pressure so great that they occupy a space no
larger than the original water; consequently the entrapped waters exert
a pressure as great as the strongest dynamite.
The most notable volcanic explosion that ever occurred in historic time
was when that old extinct volcano, Krakatoa, in the Straits of Sunda,
that had been sleeping for thousands of years, was literally blown into
the sky by the pressure of the pent-up gases beneath it.
This great eruption occurred in 1883. More than sixty thousand persons
were killed. The captain of a tramp steamer, who happened to be passing
in the vicinity of Krakatoa at a distance of some miles, a short time
before the explosion occurred, saw a very strange disturbance in the sea
in the direction of the old mountain. Taking his glass he saw a perfect
Niagara of water pouring into an enormous fissure that had opened in the
earth. He was struck with consternation and rightly imagining that
something very serious was likely soon to happen, he put on all steam to
escape, and luckily he had reached a point which enabled him to survive
the effects of the awful blast when it came.
The vast mass of water which had tumbled into the bowels of the earth
was immediately trapped by the closing of the great fissure down which
it had poured. The water was quickly converted by the intense heat into
a veritable high explosive, with the result that the massive mountain
was literally blown bodily skyward, and fell in huge fragments into the
surrounding sea. The shock was so great that it was felt clear through
the earth, and an immense tidal wave was set going which encircled the
earth. The opposing portions of the great wave, meeting in the lower
Atlantic, flowed up even to the coast of France. An atmospheric wave
passed around the earth three times. It is estimated that the amount of
volcanic mud that was discharged from the mountain during the eruption
was more than the muddy Mississippi discharges into the Gulf of Mexico
in two hundred years.
There was so much impalpably fine volcanic dust blown into the upper
atmosphere that it did not entirely settle out of the air for more than
two years, which period was noted for its beautiful glowing sunsets, due
to the illumination of the fine dust suspended in the upper air.
As the ax is to the woodsman, so are high explosives to the engineer.
With dynamite he hews down the hills, fills the valleys and tunnels the
mountain-range to make a straight and even way for the locomotive. He
cuts canals through the width of the land, uniting rivers and seas.
Always in the van of civilization, there is heard the churn of the
rock-drill and the echoing crash and roar of the dynamite blast.
Also it is the huge high explosive shell that makes way for the march of
modern armies, and high explosive mines and torpedoes are the terror of
the underseas.
All forms of dynamite are high explosives, and all high explosives may
fairly be called dynamite.
Smokeless gunpowder is actually but a modified form of high explosive.
It is dynamite that has been chained and tamed by the chemist's cunning,
so that it will burn without detonation, and thus permit the
utilization of its awful energy to hurl shot and shell from war's great
guns.
Thus it is that dynamite in its varied forms deserves the high place
with steam and electricity as one of the great triumvirs that have been
the architects of the modern world.
THE FORGOTTEN BIT OF FULMINATE
In experimenting with high explosives and in their manufacture, a little
absent-mindedness, a very slight lack of exact caution, a seemingly
insignificant inadvertence for a moment, may cost one a limb or his
life. The incident that cost me my left hand is a case in point.
On the day preceding that accident, I had had a gold cap put on a tooth.
In consequence, the tooth ached and kept me awake the greater part of
the night. Next morning I rose early and went down to my factory at
Maxim, New Jersey. In order to test the dryness of some fulminate
compound I took a little piece of it, about the size of an English
penny, broke off a small particle, placed it on a stand outside the
laboratory and, lighting a match, touched it off.
Owing to my loss of sleep the night before, my mind was not so alert as
usual, and I forgot to lay aside the remaining piece of fulminate
compound, but, instead, held it in my left hand. A spark from the
ignited piece entered my left hand between my fingers, igniting the
piece there, with the result that my hand was blown off to the wrist,
and the next thing I saw was the bare end of the wristbone. My face and
clothes were bespattered with flesh and filled with slivers of bone....
The following day, my thumb was found on the top of a building a couple
of hundred feet away, with a sinew attached to it, which had been pulled
out from the elbow.
A tourniquet was immediately tightened around my wrist to prevent the
flow of blood, and I and two of my assistants walked half a mile down to
the railroad, where we tried to stop an upgoing train with a red flag.
But it ran the flag down and went on, the engineer thinking, perhaps,
from our wild gesticulations that we were highwaymen.
We then walked another half-mile to a farmhouse, where a horse and wagon
were procured. Thence I was driven to Farmingdale, four and a half miles
distant, where I had to wait two hours for the next train to New York.
The only physician in the town was an invalid, ill with tuberculosis. I
called on him while waiting, and condoled with him, as he was much worse
off than was I.
On arrival in New York, I was taken in a carriage to the elevated
station at the Brooklyn Bridge. On reaching my station at Eighty-fourth
Street, I walked four blocks, and then up four flights of stairs to my
apartments on Eighty-second Street, where the surgeon was awaiting me.
It was now evening, and the accident had occurred at half-past ten
o'clock in the morning. That was a pretty hard day!
As I had no electric lights in the apartments, only gas, the surgeon
declared that it would be dangerous to administer ether, and that he
must, therefore, chloroform me. He added that there was no danger in
using chloroform, if the patient had a strong heart. Thereupon I asked
him to examine my heart, since, if there should be the least danger of
my dying under the influence of the anesthetic, I wanted to make my
will.
"Heart!" exclaimed the surgeon, with emphasis. "A man who has gone
through what you have gone through today _hasn't_ any heart!"
The next day I dictated letters to answer my correspondence as usual.
The young woman stenographer, who took my dictation, remarked, with a
sardonic smile:
"You, too, have now become a shorthand writer."
The grim jest appealed to my sense of humor.
On the third day I was genuinely ill and had no wish to do business.
Within ten days, however, I was out again, attending to my affairs.
HELL SWAZEY BREAKS UP THE DANCE
About the first use of nitroglycerin in the United States as a blasting
agent on a large scale was in the construction of the Hoosac Tunnel in
Massachusetts, on the Boston and Albany Railroad.
So many accidents had occurred where the use of nitroglycerin had been
attempted, that engineers and contractors were afraid to employ it.
Nobel, however, had discovered that when nitroglycerin was absorbed in
infusorial earth, it was rendered much less sensitive. This material he
called dynamite.
A chemist by the name of Professor Mowbray believed that the main
trouble with nitroglycerin had been that it was not sufficiently
purified in its manufacture. He induced the builders of the Hoosac
Tunnel to try his product. He built a laboratory on the side of Hoosac
Mountain, over the village of North Adams, where he produced the stuff.
He put it up in tin cans, which held about a quart. For transportation
these were carefully packed with cotton flannel between them.
The method of using the dynamite was to pour it into holes drilled in
the rock, inserting an exploder cap and fuze in the usual manner. At
that time it was popularly supposed that if nitroglycerin or dynamite
were allowed to freeze, it became very highly sensitive and would
explode on the slightest jar. Stories were prevalent that the sound of a
fiddle string would explode nitroglycerin when frozen.
One day there came an urgent call from the east end of the Tunnel for
more nitroglycerin. Professor Mowbray had in his employ a care-free and
fear-free fellow by the name of Helton Swazey. When Swazey was sober, he
was the soul of good nature, but when drunk, which was very frequently,
he was as savage as a hungry cougar. This peculiarity earned Helton
Swazey the nickname of Hell Swazey.
It was a very cold winter day when the call came, and Professor
Mowbray, learning that Hell Swazey was going over the mountain that very
evening to attend a dance, asked him if he would not take over the
nitroglycerin with him. A hot-water bag was placed with the
nitroglycerin and all was wrapped in a heavy blanket to protect it from
Jack Frost. The shipment was placed in the back of Swazey's sleigh.
Hell Swazey's best girl, whom he took with him, did not know the nature
of the cargo.
The nine-mile ride over the mountain was very cold. Swazey kept himself
warm by imbibitions from a flask of liquid caloric, and to keep the
young woman warm he took the blanket and the hot-water bag from the
nitroglycerin for her comfort, leaving the explosive to the mercy of the
below-zero weather.
When Swazey arrived at the dance-hall to join in the frolic, he was in
so ugly and meddlesome a mood that he was promptly put out of the hall,
followed by his woman companion. Swazey was mad all through. He went to
the sleigh, and taking an armful of the cans of nitroglycerin, returned
to the hall, and opening the door proceeded to hurl them with all his
force at the merry-makers.
One can struck upon the stove and glanced across the room. Cans smashed
against wall, ceiling and floor.
As the frightened occupants fled through the windows, they did as Mark
Twain did when he saw the ghost--they did not stop to raise the windows,
but they took the windows with them. In the language of Mark, they did
not need the windows, but it was handier to take them than it was to
leave them, and so they took them.
When Hell Swazey turned up for duty the next morning, Professor Mowbray
had already heard of the escapade, but he was filled with marveling why
the nitroglycerin had not exploded, particularly as it must have been
frozen very hard.
When Swazey entered the presence of the Professor, he expected
immediately to be discharged. He was meek and crestfallen enough, and
began to excuse himself and to apologize for his behavior.
To his amazement, Professor Mowbray appeared to be very much interested
and pleased, tapping his forehead with his finger, smiling and nodding,
and muttering to himself, "Good; good; splendid!" He interrogated Swazey
carefully, to be assured that the nitroglycerin was frozen hard, that it
had been thrown hard, that it had struck hard, and that it had not
exploded.
That very night there was mailed at the North Adams Post Office an
application for a patent for freezing nitroglycerin to make it safe to
handle.
THE POET'S UPLIFT
Explosive factories are veritable schools of efficiency. All work is
done under the eye of the most vigilant caution, and the penalty for
negligence is so expensive in the destruction of life and property that
science, which is knowledge, and proceeds from sure premises to safe
conclusions, is the sole guide. It does not do to follow a guess. The
dynamite factory is no place for that class of persons who believe
themselves to be favorites of Providence or of Almighty God, for
dynamite plays no favorites.
There is probably no other class of persons so little guided by science
as are the poets. They pride themselves on the fact that they ignore
science. They claim that poetry is a sort of transcendental stuff,
star-dusted from the gods' abode upon only a few persons fortunate
enough to be born with a divine afflatus, which puts them into a fine
frenzy--a condition of body and mind partaking somewhat of the
ecstaticism of the Whirling Dervish, the spiritual clairvoyant and the
soothsayer--a holy hysteria--a delirium-tremendous effervescence of
over-soul--in which condition they are able actually to commandeer the
co-operation of the Deity.
To heighten the humbug, the poets claim, to quote, that "_poetry knows
no law_," that "_it is above and beyond all law_"; and consequently that
it is "_the antithesis of science_," veritably "_the despair of
science_," "_defying all attempts at analysis and understanding_," and
that, being an inspired product, "_poetry is the greatest achievement of
the human mind_."
The poets would have us believe that all of the great inventors and
discoverers, scientists and philosophers, have been far inferior to the
poets. The poets would have us believe that all the triumphs of
chemistry and mechanics have been small compared with the triumphs of
poetry. The poets would have us believe that the invention of the
phonograph, of the telephone, of wireless telegraphy, the discovery of
radium and the X-ray, the discovery of gravitation, are not equal to
such triumphs of the poets as "Aurora Leigh," "Curfew Must Not Ring
Tonight," and "The May Queen."
The poets would have us believe that the discovery of the spectroscope,
which tells the composition of the stars so far away that the light by
which we see them now left its source before the building of Babylon and
the founding of the Egyptian Pyramids, is a less wonderful product of
the human mind than is Shelley's "Skylark."
It is perfectly safe for the poets to live and move and have their being
in error, but it does not do even for a poet, when working with
explosive materials, to eliminate scientific procedure, for in that case
he is likely to get an uplift that will sprinkle the feet of the angels
with his filamented fragments.
This very thing actually once happened in the Pennsylvania oil region
when the poet laureate of his community was blessed by the discovery of
petroleum on his otherwise worthless farm. One well sunk by the oil
company gushed a large quantity of both oil and natural gas. The royalty
received by the poet was immense. One day he conceived the idea of
climbing to the top of the oil-derrick and writing a poem to vent his
pent-up fervor.
He had engaged the services of a photographer to catch his
beatitudinations. The sun was just descending the horizon, and the poet
and the top of the derrick were still aglow in the radiance of sunset,
while derrick and poet were enveloped in an explosive mixture of gas and
air a hundred feet in diameter. The photographer had said, "Beady, look
pleasant, please." This was the moment of inspiration. The poet loosed
his divine afflatus and set his fine frenzy to doing things. The
following science-confounding doggerel is what he effused:--
_Poetry is a divine art
And I am a poet to the heart,
And am writing these lovely lines
Right where the setting sun shines,
Just at the close of a beautiful day,
Under the milk-like Milky Way,
But which cannot be seen just yet though
Because of the sunset's brighter glow.
Yet I know it is there, and poesy may
Raise me nearer the Milky Way._
... And it did, for at this point the poet struck a match to light a
cigarette, and the explosive mixture of natural gas and air about him
fired first.
When last seen the poet was headed for the Milky Way.
HOW BENDER LOWERED THE PRICE OF DYNAMITE
Once, when entering my storage magazine at Maxim, New Jersey, in which
were several carloads of dynamite, along with 37,000 pounds of
nitrogelatin, made to fill an order from the Brazilian Government, I saw
John Bender, one of my laboring men, calmly but emphatically opening a
case of dynamite with cold chisel and hammer. With some epithetitious
phraseology, I dismissed him.
It was not long after this incident, when the Boniface of the inn at
Farmingdale, a nearby village, called upon me to buy some dynamite. He
told me that he had employed John Bender to blow the stumps out of a
meadow lot. I related to him my experience with that reckless person,
and tried to impress him with the fact that Bender was temperamentally
so constituted as to court death, not only for himself but for others
about him, when handling dynamite.
But Boniface was unconvinced. He wanted Bender to do the work and he
wanted the dynamite to do it with. Bender, he said, had assured him that
he was a great expert in the handling of dynamite--that he could so
place a charge under a stump that he could always tell beforehand the
direction the stump would take, and about how far it would go under the
impulse of the blast. Therefore, it was only a question of the price of
the dynamite.
"Well," said I, "the dynamite you want is sixteen cents a pound, but
I'll bet you the dynamite against the price of it that John Bender kills
himself with it, so that if he does not succeed in blowing himself up
and killing himself with the dynamite, you can have it for nothing. On
the other hand, if he does blow himself up, you must pay for the
dynamite."
A few days later, there was some hitch in Bender's exceptional luck. A
particularly refractory old stump had resisted a couple of Bender's
dynamic attacks. The failure to dislodge the stump Bender took as a
personal affront, because it reflected upon his skill as a
stump-blaster.
"Next time," said he, "something is going to happen."
He placed about twenty pounds of dynamite under the deep-rooted veteran,
touched it off, and several things happened in very quick succession.
The huge stump let go its hold on earth, and proceeded to hunt Bender.
It was a level race, but the stump won. Striking Bender on the north
quarter, it stove in four ribs, dislocated a few joints, and damaged him
in several other respects and particulars.
Boniface came to settle for the dynamite.
"Sixteen cents a pound," I said. "Bender hasn't a chance in a hundred.
Wait till the doctors are through with him."
"What do you say to a compromise," suggested Boniface, "of eight cents a
pound? For really," quoth he, "I do not believe that Bender is more than
half dead."
And the account was settled on that basis.
FOOLHARDY KRUGER
One of the most dare-devil men I ever had in my employ was a young
fellow by the name of Joe Kruger. He was a very hard worker, and that
won pardon for his many indiscretions.
I sent him one day to a neighboring explosives works to get a special
kind of guncotton made there, and told him to have it sent by freight in
a wet state. Instead, however, he filled about fifty pounds into a big
burlap bag, in a perfectly dry state, and took it on the train with him
and into the smoking-car, placing it on the seat beside him. He struck a
match, lighted a cigar, and smoked throughout the entire journey. Had
the least spark of match or cigar fallen upon the bag, the guncotton
would have gone off with a tremendous flash and, although it would not
have detonated, it would have burned him terribly, as well as any
persons sitting near, and would have blown out all of the windows in the
car.
At another time, in order to test the insensitiveness of a certain high
explosive, a quantity of it was charged into a four-inch iron pipe, and
the pipe hung against a tree as a target to ascertain whether or not the
bullet would penetrate the high explosive without exploding it.
Kruger and I fired several shots with a Springfield rifle from cover at
long range without hitting the cylinder of explosive. I was then called
away and told Kruger to continue firing until he hit the mark. As soon
as I left him, he advanced with the gun to within a few rods of the
tree. His first shot penetrated the cylinder, exploding it with terrific
violence, blowing the tree, which was about eight inches in diameter,
clean off, while the fragments of metal flew about his head like
hailstones. But none happened to hit him.
* * * * *
The following is the sort of adventure that is likely to happen to
anyone under similar circumstances and has doubtless happened before and
since.
Kruger had a dog which was well trained to fetch anything that his
master threw for him. One day Kruger took some sticks of dynamite and
went to a neighboring stream with the intention of dynamiting some fish.
He attached fuze and exploder to a stick of the explosive, and threw it
toward the stream, but, missing his aim, the dynamite landed on a rock.
The faithful dog, thinking that the stick had been thrown for him to
bring, ran and returned with it to his master in great glee, with the
fuze sizzing nearer and nearer to the explosive. Kruger ran in horror,
the dog after him, deeming it great sport. The dog being the better
runner, danced about his master. Finding it impossible to escape by
running, Kruger climbed a tree with all the alacrity he could muster,
and had just reached a vantage of safety when the dynamite exploded, and
the dog--well, the dog was holding the stick in his mouth when it went
off.
DISCHARGING PAT
A works foreman of mine who had been employed as assistant
superintendent in another dynamite factory told me the following story:
He one day intercepted an Irish laborer who was taking a barrel, which
had been used for settling nitroglycerin, down to the soda dry-house,
with the intention of filling it with hot nitrate of soda from the
drying-pans. The foreman scolded Pat roundly, and told him that, should
he do such a reckless thing again, he would be instantly discharged. The
foreman then went to the superintendent's office and reported the
matter.
In the meantime, Patrick, utterly ignoring the injunction, simply waited
for the foreman to disappear, then proceeded to the dry-house with the
barrel and began to fill it with the hot nitrate of soda.
Over in the superintendent's office the foreman had just completed his
narration of Pat's carelessness, when there was a thunderous report and
a crash of glass, and Pat's booted foot landed on the office floor
between them.
The superintendent dryly remarked, "Evidently, Pat is already
discharged!"
LINES TO A LADY
Some years ago, when I was conducting experiments with detonators for my
safety delay-action fuze, which was adopted by the United States Navy in
1908 as the service detonating fuze for high-explosive projectiles, I
received instructions that a parcel of fulminate detonators, made at the
torpedo station, had been received and were being held for me at Fort
Lafayette, and I was told to go to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, whence I
would be taken in a tug to the Fort for them.
After having procured the package, I concluded that it would be much
more expeditious for me to take a trolley car home than to return by the
tug. On entering the car and seating myself, I placed the package beside
me on the seat, keeping my eye constantly upon it. It was, by the way,
perfectly safe to carry if subject to merely ordinary handling, but it
would not do to jump on it or to kick it about much, for, in that case,
there might be some energetic results.
No sooner had I comfortably seated myself in the car than a huge,
determined, militant-looking woman entered, brushing a few small men
aside. Seeing all the seats occupied except the space where the package
was, she turned and hurled herself backward and downward.