Dynamite Stories, and Some Interesting Facts About Explosives

... 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.

Her movements were so quick that I had barely time to throw my left arm firmly under her, and, although I am unusually strong, I had all I could do to support her enormous bulk. When she felt my arm beneath her, protecting the package, she was all the more indignant and determined to crush the package in order to teach me a lesson, and she glared upon me fiercely. I finally succeeded, by throwing my shoulder against her, in toppling her sufficiently to remove the package with my right hand, and then I let her down upon the seat.

I seldom wax poetical, and never permit myself to write verses to ladies when I am not sure that they will be gratefully received. But, in this case, I side-stepped a little from my usual course, and, taking my note-book from my pocket, wrote the following lines, which I folded up nicely, and when I arrived at my street, I handed the paper to Her Militancy:

HE SEPARATED

The freezing point of dynamite is about eight degrees F. higher than that of water. Once frozen, it remains congealed at temperatures considerably above the freezing point. When solidly frozen, it can be detonated only with much difficulty, and even then only with great loss of explosive force. Consequently, when conducting blasting operations in cold weather, it is necessary to thaw frozen dynamite before using it. The process is neither dangerous nor difficult if conducted with ordinary precautions, but it may be made full of peril by carelessness or ignorance.

A friend of mine named Roynor, when gold-hunting in Alaska, had as a partner a venerable prospector whose only known name was Andy. Andy was the dynamiter of the combination, as well as chief cook and dish-washer.

The old man used to utilize the oven of the cooking stove for thawing his dynamite. Occasionally, he would forget that the dynamite was there until it was heated to the danger point. These little inadvertencies at last strained the nerves of Roynor beyond the elastic limit. He remonstrated to his aged partner with all the epithetitious sesquipedalian terminology of which he was capable, but nothing in the way of language or dynamite had any terrors for the old man.

“Andy,” said Roynor, finally, “if you are not more careful with that dynamite, we are going to separate, and we are going to separate the very next time you put any dynamite in the oven.”

The following evening, as Roynor was returning from his day’s work, and when nigh the shack where his partner was cooking, he saw the shack instantly convert itself into a blinding flash, which solidified into numerous scattered débris that flew by him and fell round him in abundance.

When he recovered from the stunning shock of the explosion and dazedly looked about him, he saw many fragmentary evidences of the repetition of the prospector’s carelessness.

“Well, Andy,” he sadly remarked, “I told you we should separate the next time you did it. We have separated all right—particularly you.”

THE WELL-DIGGER’S CASUALTIES

At my laboratory near Lake Hopatcong, one of the natives, who had made a reputation as a well-digger, and claimed to be able to descend through more rock in a day than could any other living man, thought that his strenuous habitude would adapt him to the manufacture of explosive materials, and with this in view he applied to me for a position.

My foreman gave him a job in which his duty was to assist with the rolling of motorite. The foreman gave the fellow explicit instructions about the care necessary to keep his fingers from getting in between the rollers, as it would not only prove uncomfortable for him were he to shed a finger or a hand, but it would also spoil the motorite by mixing it with his lacerations.... Almost at once, the end of one finger went.

Immediately, the well-digger was discharged, for his own sake and for the sake of motorite.

The man next took a contract to dig a well for one of the cottagers on the Lake. It was in the early winter. The weather was cold, and his dynamite froze very hard. He placed it in a bucket of boiling hot water, which thawed the outer stratum of the frozen stick, overheating it and rendering it very sensitive, while the core remained frozen solid.

He was too active and impatient a workman to wait long for a stick of dynamite to thaw, so he took the partly thawed stick, seized a hatchet, and proceeded to chop off one end of it.

The blow of the ax upon the soft, overheated, highly sensitive portion, compressing it against the frozen interior, which served as an anvil, exploded the stick. There was one finger and the thumb left on his right hand which held the ax, while his left hand, which had held the dynamite, and his whole left arm, were blown away.

When he looked about him with the one astonished eye that was left, he seemed pained that his old friend dynamite had gone back on him in that way.

THE RIVAL EDITORS

The following story was related to me by a professional liar, and yet I have suspicions that it is not true in every detail; but I feel sure that some variant of it has been true more than once, with the exception of the aerial incident.

A certain inventor had invented one of the very often-invented high explosive compounds of chlorate of potash, sulphur, charcoal, paraffin wax, etc., thinking that he had made a great discovery.

Now it happens that there is so much erraticism about high explosive mixtures with chlorate of potash as a base that the pathway of invention of such compounds has been strewn with the wreckage of the hopes and anatomy of their inventors.

The inventor had enlisted the financial support of a promoter, and the promoter was endeavoring to enlist financial support for himself, and to that end had invited several men of means, with two rival newspaper editors of the place, to witness a demonstration of the explosive at the inventor’s laboratory, which was a two-story, light frame structure.

The promoter was letting himself be interviewed by the two editors and other newspaper reporters on the upper floor, while the inventor was making a demonstration with some of the stuff on the lower floor, the prospective investors warily watching the proceedings from a respectful distance.

The inventor had about half a barrel of the stuff in a tub. He first took a portion of it and pounded it on an anvil to show that it would not explode from shock. Next he took a handful of it and threw it into the fire under the boiler, to show that it would not explode from mere ignition. He then took a hot iron, which he had brought to a white heat in a forge, and thrust it into the half barrel of the infernal mixture, to show that it simply could not be exploded except with a very powerful exploder or detonator.

But the mixture happened, on that occasion, to differ somewhat from the inventor with respect to the sequence of eventuations—and exploded.

The building went up, and the promoter, the two editors and the reporters on the upper floor accompanied the building.

Two of the newspaper men were great rivals. One of them was the editor of the Clarion and the other the editor of the Echo. It so happened that the Clarion had better facilities for getting telegraphic news than the Echo, and accordingly the Clarion was usually able to post its news in advance of the Echo, and the editor of the Clarion used often to chaff his rival with the remark, “It’s no use to put up your poster now, for my poster of the same news is just coming down.” He called the Echo the echo of the Clarion.

When the explosion occurred, the editor of the Clarion, being more directly over the explosive than was the editor of the Echo, went up farther and faster, and on his return met the editor of the Echo still going up, and called out to him, “Behind as usual! All of the other fellows are coming down.”

THE PASSING OF “JEOPARDY”

We once had a servant girl whom we nicknamed “Jeopardy,” because she could not be prevented from pouring kerosene directly from the can upon a lighted fire.

One day, Jeopardy left us very suddenly, and she never came back. We were sorry she left, as Jeopardy was a good girl. It developed that she had chanced to find a fifty-pound case of dynamite sticks in the wood-shed, which she had been using to start the fire in the kitchen stove.

Sometimes, dynamite will work all right for such a purpose, but it is notional stuff and can not be depended upon merely to burn. It was during one of these intervals of independability that Jeopardy went.

THE INVOLUNTARY ATTACK

Soon after the invention of the Maxim automatic machine gun, I took the American agency for the introduction of the weapon to the United States Government. Among the tests that were conducted with the gun at Sandy Hook was one known as the sand test, sand being sifted into the mechanism of the gun, which was then loaded and fired. The gun went through the test perfectly.

The commanding officer, however, had not himself been present at the regular tests and arrived upon the scene only after they had been concluded. This particular officer was a dyspeptic, and was at times very unpleasant and domineering. On this occasion, he was particularly so. When told by the officers immediately in charge of the tests that they had been concluded, he peremptorily commanded that the gun should be loaded and fired again. One of the under-officers demurred, stating that a sand test was a very hard one on the gun, and that it would be unfair to subject it to unnecessary hardship of that character. That officer was immediately sat upon very hard.

The gun was loaded and made ready, pointing out to sea, as usual. At this moment, a schooner was seen rapidly coming into range. The commanding officer, however, said that he wanted to see only a few rounds fired, and that there would be plenty of time to fire them before the schooner came into the zone of danger; and he immediately gave the command: “Fire.”

My assistant, who was operating the gun, instantly obeyed. After the discharge of perhaps twenty-five rounds came the command: “Cease firing!”

But the gun kept right on. Then, the command came several times in loud shouts, but the gun did not hear. The rage of the commanding officer was at white heat, but it did no good. The gun kept right on firing.

There were three hundred and thirty-three rounds in the belt, the weapon had been rigidly clamped to a set direction, and my assistant, being a little bit rattled at the loud shouts of the commanding officer, did not think to unclamp it, and turn it out of range of the schooner.

Soon, a stream of bullets, flying at the rate of six hundred a minute, were ricocheting all about the schooner, and there was wild excitement and waving of hands on board—all to no purpose, until the last cartridge had been exploded.

The trigger had been pulled by the sand and held pulled. It was, consequently, impossible to stop the gun from firing, until the belt of cartridges was exhausted.

I felt glad. The subordinate officers also looked gratified.

HOIST WITH HIS OWN PETARD

Liquid nitroglycerin is still used to torpedo the oil-wells when they get old, in order to give them a new lease of life.

There was one teamster in the old days who had become notorious as a hauler of the dangerous explosive. The law does not permit the shipment of the liquid by freight or by express, and for that reason this teamster had plenty to do in hauling nitroglycerin for long distances. He was a great smoker and his old pipe was always alight, though he might be riding on a ton of nitroglycerin with a few kegs of black gunpowder chinked into the load.

One day he was carrying, on runners, about two tons of nitroglycerin and a few odd kegs of gunpowder, when something happened. There had been a fall of several inches of light snow the evening before, and the scene of the eventuation was an open field which he was crossing.

There was an enormous crater in the ground; the light snow around the crater was besprinkled with a few shreds of horse and harness and a sliver or two of sled, but not a trace of the driver was ever found.

THE FORGOTTEN PRECAUTION

I once hired board and apartments at the house of a Frenchwoman, who took in only a few select gentlemen boarders. Perhaps I may have been justly esteemed the star boarder, inasmuch as I paid the highest price, and, too, in addition to a sleeping room and a library, I hired another large room to serve me as a laboratory. Although my main laboratory was located at my factory, still I was in the habit of conducting a few experiments in a small way when not at the factory.

I had given my landlady particular instructions about not handling the various things in my laboratory. I strictly enjoined her not to touch anything under any circumstances—I would keep the place in order myself. Nevertheless, she could not be prevented from entering the laboratory to dust and tidy it up a bit, and she generally knocked over a thing or two in the process.

One day, I brought home a pint glass jar of pure nitroglycerin, setting it up out of reach of the little three-year-old girl, who often used the laboratory as a playground, in spite of my protestations. I called my landlady’s attention to the fact that this bottle contained nitroglycerin, and I explained its dangerous character unless it were left undisturbed.

I told her that, if she found it out of the question to let the bottle alone, and should, in dusting, succeed in knocking it over and spilling its contents upon the table where it stood or upon the floor, and should wipe up the oily liquid with a rag, not to put the rag in the stove, for, if she did, she would blow the roof of the house off, and project herself into the empyrean, and through it and out at the other side.

She actually remembered this injunction for more than three days, but, on the fourth day, on my return home, the little three-year-old met me as I came in, and said:

“Mamma very sick. Cure Mamma.”

“Mamma” was lying upon a sofa, pale as a ghost, and breathing heavily. When I asked her what the matter was, she answered, “Oh, I am so sick!”

I began to be thoroughly frightened, and wormed out of her the fact that she had a terrible nitroglycerin headache. It came out that she had been dusting and tidying the laboratory that day, and had inadvertently knocked over the bottle of nitroglycerin. Fortunately, it did not explode as it fell, the contents being merely spilled upon the table and floor.

She took an old towel and soaked the liquid up with it. She then rolled up the towel in a tight, snug, compact wad, and started toward the kitchen to put the wad in the cook-stove and burn it up, when, just as she arrived at the stove, she felt a dizziness in the head, and a strange sort of sinking sensation in the stomach. The top of her head began to buzz and pound.

Then, she saw light. It dawned upon her, like the inspiring flash that came upon Saul, that this was nitroglycerin, and she recalled what I had told her about the effect it would have upon her if she handled it, and my direction that, if she should spill the stuff and then wipe it up, she must not burn the rag.

THE FATAL HAT

Out in the Pennsylvania oil regions in the early days, while nitroglycerin in the liquid state was being used experimentally as a blasting agent, some boys found in a creek an old felt hat, which had been used as a filter for nitroglycerin.

One of the boys accidentally discovered that when laid upon a stone and the edge of the hat hit with a hammer, it would crack, so they took it to a blacksmith’s shop, where they could have some fun by hammering it on an anvil.

At the first blow the old hat exploded. Two of the boys were killed outright, and two more were badly injured.

The blacksmith at the time of the accident, happened to be standing outdoors, which thereafter constituted his blacksmith shop until he could rebuild.

A DROP TOO MUCH

Professor Mowbray, who made the nitroglycerin for the Hoosac Tunnel and afterward served the American Xylonite Company many years as consulting chemist, conceived the idea that he could make a very powerful smokeless gunpowder by the use of nitroglycerin merely absorbed by fibrous guncotton and rolled into pellets. He had at the time a young assistant chemist at work for him, who has now become a man of much wealth and prominence in New York.

The assistant prepared some of the pellets under Mowbray’s directions, loaded them into a rifle under wad and ball, and fired at a target made of several layers of pine boards. But the pellets did not seem to give the bullet the required penetration. Mowbray suggested remedying this defect by adding a little more nitroglycerin, which was done. The young chemist demurred a little. Still, he did as instructed—loaded and fired the piece again, with but little better results. This time, however, the breech mechanism stuck, and was opened with difficulty.

Mowbray said that there was but one thing to do, and that was to add a few more drops of nitroglycerin. It occurred to the young chemist that this sort of gunpowder came pretty near being dynamite, and he declined to fire the piece the next time, and was deaf to all entreaties of the Professor. As a compromise, the gun was rigged up on a rest, pointing at the target; a string was attached to the trigger, which the assistant, standing behind a barricade, pulled.

This time, there was considerable penetration of the target, and the walls of the building where the test took place were penetrated in many places, not with the bullet, but with the fragments of the exploded weapon.

Mowbray, hearing the report, ran out and ventured the suggestion that he guessed he must have got in a drop too much of nitroglycerin.

A CLOSE CALL

I had one very close call while conducting a sand test of the Maxim gun at Annapolis, where the Naval Proving Grounds were formerly located. The gun had passed through all of the regular tests satisfactorily, and it was then suggested to try if sand enough could be put into the mechanism box to block it and prevent its firing.

The gun fired perhaps fifty rounds before it stopped. Then it stuck, and my assistant worked at the belt and lever, attempting to start it again. I told him to put down the safe so that the gun could not fire, which he did. I was then about to step around the gun in front, which I confess was a very careless thing to do, when it began firing again. I was already so close to the muzzle that my clothes were cut by the bullets and burned by the gunpowder.

The trigger had been pulled, and held pulled, by the sand, so that the safe did not prevent it from firing.

It is pretty good practice to keep away from the business end of a loaded gun.

A PICKANINNY’S TREASURE TROVE

Once at Annapolis, while we were firing a six-pounder semi-automatic gun in a speed test, we had succeeded in firing forty-two aimed shots in a minute into a huge earth butt, which, owing to recent rains, was merely a heap of mud.

The day following, a negro boy, about fourteen years old, found one of the projectiles, which had penetrated the butt, and glancing, came out at the top without exploding. This he brought up to where my assistant was doing some work on the gun, and showed what he had found.

My assistant shouted at him, “Look out! That’s loaded, and if you drop it, it might go off.”

Frightened, the negro immediately dropped the projectile upon the hard cement pavement, and, as it struck point down, it did go off, and took off one of his legs; and a fragment of the shell came dangerously close to the head of my assistant.

NOT TO BE BUNCOED

The great Du Pont Powder Company had in its employ at one time a faithful, patient and lucky fellow, an Italian, who worked constantly, with not a day off except Sundays, for twenty-one years in the corning mill, breaking black gunpowder press cake into grains. During that period the coming mill had blown up seven times, once every three years, but each time Giovanni had happened, by the merest chance, to be outside for a few seconds to get a drink of water or on some other brief errand. Twice he had had his clothes nearly ripped off him, and his face and hands burned, such had been his proximity on these occasions to the crater of fire as the mill went up, and once he had been rendered unconscious by the shock.

Finally, at the end of twenty-one years of service, having put aside a snug little fortune, sufficient for the remainder of his life in sunny Italy, he packed up his belongings and turned his face toward his old home. Arriving in New York, his ticket purchased, he hied himself to a noted Italian hostelry, to await the coming of the joyous morrow when he should actually be on the big steamer, headed for home.

Giovanni had no bad habits, and the bunco man failed to lure him. He took no stock in the dapper, polished-mannered compatriot just recently from his home place, who was acquainted with all the folks. His cash was sewed into his clothes, and those clothes would not come off until he reached his destination.

When he was shown up into his room at night and left alone with his thoughts, a placard upon the wall above the gas-burner attracted his attention. It read: “Don’t blow out the gas,” and under this injunction was the statement that gas burned after ten o’clock would be charged extra.

Giovanni was indignant. Here he was at last caught between the horns of a dilemma. This, to his mind, was downright thievery. He would cut the Gordian knot. He would disobey the injunction. He would not pay for gas burned overtime perforce; and he blew it out....

An old sea-captain who had for forty years traveled on every sea, who had weathered a thousand gales, and survived a hundred shipwrecks, on his return from his final voyage, in making his landing on his home shore, slipped from the dock into the water and under the skiff, and was drowned.

Such is the irony of chance!

SIR FREDERICK’S BONFIRE

Sir Frederick Abel, who was the originator of the modern process of making high-grade guncotton and of compressing it into dense cakes for use, told me the following story:

At one time, Sir Frederick had about five tons of dry guncotton, which was not of sufficient purity to stand the Government tests. He had, on previous occasions, frequently demonstrated how compressed guncotton, though dry, would quietly burn away without exploding when ignited, so he now fancied that his five tons would make a capital bonfire. With this idea of entertainment in possession of him, he invited a party of friends to witness the unique conflagration.

The friends were dominated more by the spirit of aloofness than was Sir Frederick himself, and they kept at a respectful distance, while Sir Frederick advanced toward the pile of explosive, and threw a lighted torch upon it. Then he retreated a short distance to avoid the intense heat, for he expected to see the whole pile burn away.

It started by merely burning; but, as I have already said about dynamite, it is notional stuff. So, on this occasion, the guncotton took a notion to explode after it got fairly on fire, which did not take very long. The whole mass detonated with terrific violence, and, even before Sir Frederick had retreated as far as he expected to go, he was knocked senseless by the concussion, and nearly every shred of clothing was blown from his body.... Although considerably bruised and lacerated, he recovered after several months.

He had learned a useful lesson: that a small quantity of compressed dry guncotton can be very well depended upon to burn quietly away without detonating, but, when a large mass of it is ignited, the greater heat of combustion and the greater pressure generated in expelling the larger quantity of the products of combustion, is almost sure to produce detonation.

The fact that a small quantity of an explosive material will burn away quietly without exploding has often led persons to think that a large quantity would burn in the same manner.

At one time, the British Government had on hand at Woolwich Arsenal about a hundred tons of cordite that had begun to show signs of decomposition, and it was decided to burn it. The entire quantity was taken out into an open meadow, at what was supposed to be a very safe distance from the city limits. A train was laid to the pile and set on fire.

For the same reason that the five tons of Sir Frederick Abel’s guncotton detonated, this huge heap of cordite also detonated. Almost instantly after it was ignited, it exploded with most awful violence, and with very disastrous results. A number of buildings in the near vicinity were leveled to the ground. A few persons were killed and many more injured.

THE IRREVERENT NATIVE

After I had sold out my interests at Maxim, the place was taken over by a dynamite-manufacturing company. As there was left in one of the magazines a considerable quantity of dynamite when the property changed hands, the new concern, not choosing to sell it as their own manufacture, proceeded to utilize it as fertilizer upon a field of potatoes.

One of the natives, with his team and helper, was engaged to do this work. They had been instructed to use great care in opening the cases, but they still held their own opinions about the care necessary, which were based largely upon the contempt that is born of familiarity, and, having arrived upon the potato-patch with a good, big load of dynamite, they began to knock the cases open in any old way.

There were no surviving witnesses, not even the horses.

AT FOLLY’S MERCY

After I had sold the works at Maxim and had invented motorite, I needed a place in which to make the material, and hired a branch of the works there for that purpose.

It was winter. My wife had accompanied me as a precautionary measure. She was sitting in the laboratory to keep warm, near a big barrel stove charged with bituminous coal.

On entering the laboratory for something, my wife asked me what was in those two tin pails sitting near the stove. She said that she had a suspicion it might be nitroglycerin, and she informed me that one of my men had just been in, stirring the fire, and that the sparks flew out in all directions, some of them lighting in the buckets, to be quenched in the very thin film of water floating on top of the oily liquid.

“Horrors!” I said. “It is nitroglycerin!”

I called the man who had placed it there, and told him to take it away. As it was necessary to keep the material from freezing, he took it into the boiler-house near by. A little later, on going into the boiler-house, I saw one of the men stirring the fire, while the other was standing with his coat-tails outstretched in either hand, forming a shield to keep the sparks from flying into the nitroglycerin.

It is practically impossible to make the ordinary man appreciate the necessity of care in the safe handling of explosives, and the life of the careful man is always endangered by the actions of the careless one.

THE WATCHMAN’S DOUBLE VISION

My successors in the use of the dynamite plant at Maxim had in their employ a day-watchman, an all-round combination useful and useless man, his usefulness and uselessness alternating with the alternation of his sobriety and inebriety.

One morning, after a night out, he proceeded to build the fire in the laboratory stove. To start up the kindling wood, he had been in the habit of lighting a handful of shavings, and then pouring on a little kerosene from a tomato can, which he kept upon a near-by shelf.

During that night, someone—possibly one of the laboratory operatives—had placed a similar can, filled with nitroglycerin, upon the same shelf, to keep it from freezing.

In periods of convalescence from his various stages of intoxication, the watchman had before seen two cans upon that shelf or shelves, but he knew that one of them was real, and the other an hallucination. Couldn’t fool him that way!

Thinking that the hallucination would naturally be the lighter of the two cans, he took the one containing the nitroglycerin, and proceeded to pour it upon the fire.

There was so little of him left together after the explosion that, like Captain Castagnette, he died of surprise at seeing himself so dissipated.

THE ZEALOUS FOOL

On one occasion, at my laboratory near the shores of Lake Hopatcong, I was conducting some experiments to test the efficiency of the safety chamber of a detonating fuze for exploding projectiles charged with Maximite. The huge loaded shell armed with a fuze was placed in a pit and fixed so as to be set off by electricity from a distance.

To prevent any possibility of a circuit being formed to explode the detonator while making the connections at the pit, I went into the machine-shop, and opened the switch at the other end of the wires where they were connected with the battery. Not only did I take this precaution, but I disconnected also the wires themselves, in order to make assurance doubly sure.

Returning to the pit to connect up, my assistant, my wife and my father-in-law accompanied me. My assistant descended into the pit, while we stood over him, looking on. The instant he brought the wires in contact, the detonator went off. We looked at one another in amazement. It takes time to get thoroughly scared; but, as soon as we realized the full danger through which we had passed, we were numb with fright. Even now, when I think of it, I have a creepy feeling.

We had made half a dozen tests before this, and all of the shells had exploded except one. This was the second in which the safety-chamber had proved effectual. Had it failed this time, and had the Maximite charge exploded in the huge shell, we should all have been blown to ribbons.

I rushed back to the machine-shop, where I found that a certain employee—one of those careful, painstaking souls who are always attending voluntarily to the odds and ends of work left undone by others, had discovered the wires detached from the switch. With no memory of the rule that the switch should always be left open, he forthwith connected the wires, and then, to make his culpable industry complete, he closed the switch, thus making the electric connection with the loaded shell; and, doubtless, he was comforted by a sense of duty well done. His duties in my services certainly were done, for they ended right then and there.

SOME LIVELY COTTON WASTE

I once had an Italian laborer as man-of-all-work, who was rather a good-looking fellow. An exquisite mustache and a wealth of curly hair were sources of great pride and joy to him. One day he was engaged in burning up some rubbish, and to start a fire, took what he supposed to be a bunch of dry cotton waste, but which was in fact guncotton. Holding in one hand the wad of guncotton the size of his head, he applied a match to it. There was a quick, bright flash, and hair and mustache had disappeared. He did not mind the burn so much, but his anxiety about his appearance in the eyes of his sweetheart was pathetic.

SAVING TIME

When I had completed at my works, Maxim, New Jersey, a certain frame building of generous proportions, of which I was quite proud, and in which I had installed various processes and apparatus for making smokeless gunpowder, I told one of my assistants to have a gauge put on a large bell-drier that stood in a corner, which was employed for the time being to extract the moisture from about forty pounds of guncotton. He gave instructions to a machinist to do the job, telling him to remove the guncotton first.

As it was necessary for the machinist merely to bore a hole through the bell-drier and screw in the connecting pipe, he thought it a useless expenditure of time and effort to remove the guncotton. After he had bored the hole nearly through, he took a punch and hammer to knock out the remaining burr. A spark ignited the guncotton, and that bell-drier went right up through the roof and turned a somersault, striking about a hundred feet away. The walls of the building on the end where the explosion occurred were thrown outward, and the roof came down.

My assistant and another young man were in the building with the machinist at the time. Although dazed by the shock, they immediately rushed to the rescue of the poor fellow, who lay prostrate under a pile of burning débris. Not much could be done for the unfortunate, and he died soon afterward.

This instance is a type of many that result from inadequate precaution by workmen in the manufacture of explosives.

THE BROKEN SCALE

One of the closest calls that I ever had in my life occurred in my laboratory at Maxim, New Jersey, in the early nineties.

Two of my assistants and myself were weighing out small batches of fulminate of mercury from a ten-pound jar. There were on the bench as many as half-a-dozen small squares of glass, each with its little pile of fulminate upon it. There was also a five-pound bottle of nitroglycerin standing on the bench. A little way removed, and under the bench, was a fifty-pound can of gelatin dynamite.

We were proceeding very cautiously, when all at once the scoop toppled, and an iron weight fell, striking within an eighth of an inch of one of the pieces of glass on which was fulminate of mercury. After a second of suspense, we stared at one another in amazement, wondering whether or not we were still in the land of the living.

An investigation into the cause of the accident revealed the fact that one of the young men employed in the laboratory had broken off an arm of the scales—one of the supports of the scoop—the day before, and, with criminal reticence, had made absolutely no mention of the fact to anyone. Had that weight fallen upon the fulminate, it must have dealt death to all of us.

THE SINGULAR GOOD FORTUNE OF A GENTLE ENGLISHMAN

It so happened that during a tour of inspection seven of us were together, going over the works. On entering the guncotton dry-house, I noticed a strong odor of nitric acid.

“Out of here, quick!” I cried. “The place is going to blow up!”

There were perhaps a hundred pounds of dry guncotton in the room at the time, spread out in pans. As was afterward learned, the foreman, being in a hurry for the guncotton, had turned live steam into the pipes instead of circulating hot water through them as instructed.

We were barely out of the room when the guncotton burned with a flash, wrecking the building and setting fire to the fragments. I was just congratulating myself that no one had been injured by the explosion, when it was discovered that one of the party, an Englishman, the even tenor of whose way nothing could accelerate or disturb, and who feared nothing, had not quite made up his mind in time to get out of the room before the flash came. On seeing him emerge at last from the zone of destruction, I was horror-struck, for apparently every hair had been burned from his head and face, while shreds of skin hung from his hands and cheeks and brow.

Nevertheless, the Englishman’s usual phlegmatic manner was wholly unruffled, and he spoke in his conventional voice, untinged with emotion:

“Mr. Maxim, it isn’t often that one has an opportunity under such circumstances of witnessing exactly what occurs.”

THE MATCH AT THE PEEP-HOLE

A certain patented device is used for the recovery of solvents in the manufacture of smokeless gunpowder. An acquaintance of mine conceived the idea that it would be an excellent thing to employ this same device for the recovery of alcohol used in the manufacture of felt hats. He conducted experiments successfully, having the hats placed in a chamber through which hot air was circulated, and from which it was afterwards conveyed to a refrigerating compartment to condense out the alcohol, then reheated and returned to the drying chamber.

Ultimately, this ingenious person so won the confidence of a company of hat manufacturers that they determined to build the apparatus at their factory, and to give it a thorough trial to test its practicability. Things progressed very well indeed, until there came a day when a leak was discovered in some part of the apparatus, and a plumber was called in to make the necessary repairs. This artisan’s first act was to open a peep-hole, light a match, and peer into the drying chamber.

There was much instantaneity in the activities that followed. Fourteen persons were killed outright, including the plumber and his assistant, and the building was completely wrecked.

THE FLASK OF LIQUOR

Some years ago, in Austria, a worker in one of the mines found a flask nearly full of a liquor that he took to be whisky. Delighted with this treasure trove, he raised the flask to his lips, and gulped down a portion of the contents. Another workman, standing by, snatched the flask, and, in his turn, quaffed the liquor greedily.

That liquid in the flask was nitroglycerin, which, taken internally, is one of the most virulent of poisons. Both of these workmen were stone dead in less time than it has taken to tell this story of their fatal folly.

IMPERTINENCE PUNISHED

During the experiments at Sandy Hook which preceded the adoption of Maximite by the United States Government, a young lieutenant just out of West Point was placed in charge of the loading, although he knew absolutely nothing about explosives. He tried hard, however, to make up for his deficient knowledge by the most exacting, impertinent and foolish requirements.

I rebelled, but was told by the commanding officer that, while he fully appreciated the situation, he must, as a matter of duty, support his subordinate officer, and he advised me to return to my task in looking after the loading of the Maximite, under the direction of the impudent youngster. This I did.

The lieutenant, now having his own way, heated some Maximite very hot and filled a projectile with it through the false base plug provided for the purpose. There were two holes in the false base plug, through one of which the Maximite was poured into the projectile, while the other served as a vent. Being uncertain whether or not the projectile was filled solidly, the officer took a round stick, and rammed it down one of the holes, while he looked into the other. The result was that his eyes were filled and his face covered with the hot liquid Maximite, putting him out of commission for a week.

My sympathy for the fellow was quite overbalanced by my gratification.

CURIOSITY’S UPLIFT

Shortly after the Russo-Japanese war, there drifted in upon the Chinese shore one of the huge floating mines constructed by the Russians, containing about five hundred pounds of guncotton. This strange object greatly excited the curiosity of the Chinese, who flocked in large numbers to view it. While half a thousand of them were crowded in close upon the mine, marveling over the mystery of this flotsam, one of their number began to investigate it with a hammer, and, hitting the fuze a heavy blow, exploded the mine.

An American witnessed the event from a distance. Wondering what all the excitement was about, he had started toward the crowd with the intention of making an investigation on his own account, when, of a sudden, there was a flash and shock. The horde of Chinamen that had been clustered about the mine vanished in a cloud of dust. Fragments of heads, arms and legs rocketed skyward in the form of an inverted cone. The head of a Chinaman, severed from the trunk, went hurtling through the air, with the queue out-streaming behind, like a comet coming to perihelion. It passed just over the horrified American and struck the ground some distance beyond him.

PROUD EVEN UNTO DEATH

An inventor, who lived in the mosquito belt of Staten Island, constructed a dynamite gun out of a piece of four-inch-gas-pipe, and a dynamite bomb out of a short section of gas-pipe, capped at both ends. The bomb was filled with No. 1 dynamite. He placed several pads of felt between the projectile and the powder charge, to lessen the shock upon the bomb. By using small charges, he succeeded in firing a number of the projectiles safely. Although the velocity was low, still it was greater than that obtainable with the Zalinski pneumatic dynamite gun, which at that time was beginning to receive some measure of public attention.

The inventor was so fortunate as to have a “pull” with the congressman from his district, and through this influence he succeeded in getting Government permission for a test of his piece at Sandy Hook. In the meantime he had strengthened the powder chamber of his gun by driving on several steel hoops, in order to use larger charges of powder. So confident was he of the safety of his system of throwing high explosives, that, when the officers at Sandy Hook insisted on his retiring with them behind the bomb-proof during the firing of the piece, he balked and insisted that he be permitted to stand by his gun while firing it, as he had done in his previous experiments on Staten Island. He was not in the least impressed with any possibility of danger by reason of the fact that he was now using a much larger powder charge.

The officers, however, were obdurate. They told him bluntly that he must either stand behind the bomb-proof, or his gun would not be tested.

He replied:

“Very well, if Uncle Sam does not want my gun enough to let me test it in my own way, then I will sell it to foreign governments, and make Uncle Sam feel very sick and sorry.”

On his return with his gun to Staten Island, he gathered together a party of neighbors and some representatives of the press, to witness the experiments that Uncle Sam had missed. When the gun was ready to fire, the little knot of spectators frayed out, and peeped from cover. There was but one shot, which was not a shot, but an explosion.

After waiting for some time for the inventor to come down and explain, the spectators went home, disappointed.

THE DOG THAT ATE DYNAMITE

In the early nineties I was experimenting with a new fulminate compound as a detonator for fuzes in high explosive projectiles. The compound consisted of fulminate of mercury with gelatinated guncotton and nitroglycerin.

One of my workmen had a pup of a miscellaneous breed, which would eat anything under the sun that he could masticate, and when anything was thrown into his mouth not too big for him to bolt, he swallowed it without the formality of chewing it.

One day his master gave him about half a pound of this fulminate compound. Another of the workmen put some metallic sodium and dry fulminate into a gelatin capsule, stuck this into the end of a quintuple dynamite cap, wrapped the whole thing in a piece of meat, and, calling the dog out into the field, made him stand up and “speak” for it. Then he dropped it into the dog’s throat and it was swallowed at a gulp.

The next instant, the latter workman’s own dog, which he prized very highly, came upon the scene and entered into a very brisk wrestling-bout with the dog that had been charged. Before he could call him away, there was a terrific explosion, and both dogs vanished from this vale of tears.