: Dynamite Stories and Some Interesting Facts About Explosives by Maxim Hudson - Explosions

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ent 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 d?bris. 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.

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