Читать книгу Tri-nitro-glycerine, as Applied in the Hoosac Tunnel, Submarine Blasting, etc., etc., etc онлайн

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The new magazine had hardly been completed, and stored with Nitro-Glycerin, when on Sunday morning, 6:30 o’clock, March 12, ’71, the neighborhood was startled by another explosion of sixteen hundred pounds of Nitro-Glycerin. The cause of this last explosion, was continuous overheating of the magazine. Work at the factory had been suspended for a week, the heating arrangement was now effected by steam, in order to avoid a possibility of actual fire, the weather for several days had been close and muggy,—some parties who had visited the magazine remarked to me afterwards, they had noticed a hot, close air, similar to that experienced on entering the drying room of a print factory, whilst the watchman confessed he had neglected to examine the thermometer, made up his fire under the boiler, and gone to bed. I had been summoned during the previous week to Washington, taken down with sickness and unable to return home,—the new foreman having been closely at work without any Christmas vacation, owing to the previous accident, availed himself with my permission, (during the suspension of work at the factory) to visit New York. Fortunately this accident involved no damage to life or limb, whilst a very instructive lesson was taught in the following circumstance: within twelve feet of the magazine was a shed, 16×8 containing twelve 50 lb. cans of congealed Nitro-Glycerin ready for shipment. This shed was utterly destroyed, the floor blasted to splinters, the joists rent to fragments, the cans of congealed Nitro-Glycerin driven into the ground, the tin of which they were composed perforated, contorted, battered, and portions of tin and Nitro-Glycerin sliced off but not exploded. Now, this fact proves one of two things, either that the Tri-Nitro-Glycerin made by the Mowbray process, differs from the German Nitro-Glycerin in its properties, or the statements printed in the foreign journals as quoted again and again that Nitro-Glycerin when congealed is more dangerous than when in a fluid state, are erroneous.