Shooting an Oil Well with Nitroglycerin.
Notwithstanding that no accident occurred in any of the many firings, that the stability and safety of the explosive are assured, and that the explosion has been effected with a well-known and long-used form of fuse, no provision has yet been made to supply the service with charges for its costly armor-piercing projectiles.
Happily, the force resident in explosives may be applied to the saving as well as to the destruction of human life, advantage having long since been taken of the penetrating power of the report from the discharge of a gun to employ them as signals of distress at sea or as warnings in foggy weather. The English Lighthouse Board, under Professor Tyndall’s guidance, some years ago sought to find the form of gun best suited to this purpose, and their experiments led them at first to a bronze gun with a bell-shaped mouth. Subsequently, their attention being called to the sharpness and carrying power of the report from detonating gun cotton, an apparatus was devised in which the gun cotton was detonated in the focus of a parabolic mirror. The best results, however, were attained with rockets carrying gun cotton charges arranged to be exploded in mid air.
Safe to be opened by Detonation of Nitroglycerin. Before the charge was fired.
After firing Charge.
Guns have also been arranged for projecting life-lines between stranded ships and the adjacent shore, and are now employed on a smaller scale for conveying lines to the upper stories of our monumental buildings when they are on fire. By means of guns or rockets, projectiles filled with oil may be cast to considerable distances from a vessel in a raging sea, so that the oil, as it diffuses, may still the waters in her course; while sounding-lines may be thrown far in advance of a vessel while she is still under way, and the soundings taken without her laying-to.
Inclosed in shallow tin boxes, which are fixed by lead strips to the top of the rail, explosives are used as torpedoes in the railroad service to give warning, by the report of their explosion as an engine runs over them, that another train is on the same track and but a short distance ahead, and by this means collisions in fogs or on curves are frequently prevented.
Explosives find applications in many industries. The farmer uses them in breaking bowlders, grubbing stumps and felling trees, in shaking the soil to fit it for deep-soil cultivation, and, in the wine-growing districts, to free it from phylloxera, while the farmer’s friend has tried by this means, in times of drought, to shake the nerves of Jove and to divert the hailstorm from its course.