New Britain Herald Newspaper, February 3, 1928, Page 11

* EXPLOSIVES ARE. POVERFLL SLAVES Are Usad by Mea fo Accomplish Enormous Tasks ‘Washington, D. C., Feb. $.—Boom- ing detonations that a century ago fould have meant only the thunders ©Of war, are heard almost every day now by the inhabitants of any size- able city. They are the sounds of | man's most powerful slaves, explo- | sives, carrying on their daily labors | of peace for civilization: tearing | loose materials for lime and cement, | digging out etone for structures and roads, plercing hills, excavating that | dams, rallways, and factorles may grow. The pioneer slowly and laboriously slashed his way through Nature's superficial barriers with | his ax: with much less effort the modern engineer blasts his way | through mountains, tumbles hills into valleys, and recasts the face of | the earth to his liking and his need. An Age of Explosives Civilization has had its ages of stone and bronze and steel; of wind | uand water and steam power. It re- | quires taking no great liberties with terms to call this an age of explo- | sivea. Man blasts out the route for\ GOING OUT OF BUSINESS | farmers plow |any other way. '8 highway; makes it smooth with stone and cement blown out else- where; and all that it may be traversed by millions of vehicles propelled by explosions of gasses. Overhead airplanes whir, driven by explosive engines. Man has con- quered the air only since- the harnessing of explosions for power, and has never made a practical fly- ing machine driven by any other form of energy. By the roadside their fields with tractors driven by similar engines, and blast boulders and stumps from their fields with charges of high | explosives, In cities, our water supplies come through aqueducts and tunnels that explosives have helped to build. Diessel engines driven by exploding petroleum are replacing steam en- gines in factories and ehips; and some light and power plants are qQperated by these highly concen- trated and economical mechanisms. Even steam plants and railways are dependent on explosives, for the coal which drives them is torn by | powder and dynamite from the bowels of the earth. « Mightiest Tool Never since man developed his first crude tools — wooden clubs, stone hammers, and the rest—has he come upon a device or a substance comparable in force to explosives They give him the powers of a demi- god. With them he can come closer to imitating hature’s forces than in the force of gravity so as to hurl projectiles scores of miles. He can overcome | NEW BRITAIN DAILY HERALD, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1928. even shake the earth itself mo t! his earthquake waves can be detect- ed by seismographs hundreds of miles away, When Hell Gate Rock was blown up at New York in 1885 the tremors were recorded at Albany and at Boston. Explosives dependsfor their great power on the fact that while occu- |pying a relatively small space an in- |stant before explosion, their gases toccupy a tremendously greater space |the instant after. Gunpowder, the |first and the “tamest” of the well- {known explosives exerts, when it ex- |plodes in a confined space, 6,000 [times the pressure of the atmosphere |or nearly 50 tons per square inch, 1The “high explosives,” dynamite, {gun-cotton, nitro-glyceriné, and |TNT, exert several times the force of powder; and mercury fulminate, jthe most violent of all, produces a 1 pressure of 200 tons per square inch. | The latter findé its chief use in very |small quantities in the form of caps |used to detonate less violent ex- | plosives. Most Sensitive Explosive | All explosives are dangerous and [must be handled with caution; but |there are definite degrees of danger- |ousness. Gunpowder and _dynamite |will not explode unless subjected to a more or less violent jolt. Nitro- |glycerine and TNT are detonated {much more easily. The most sensi- Itive of all explosives iS nitrogen- odide. This substances is so un- stable that it is said that the tap of |a feather will set it off. Even in peace time the United | States manufactures large quantities He can | of explosives. In 1926 the total, not |of Roger Bacon in considering explosives for ammuni- tion, wae more than half a billjon pounds. Of this, approximately two- thirds was made up of high explo- sives and one-third of black powder. A quarter of the high explosives and 86 per cent of the black powder was used in coal mining. Nearly half of all the high explosives were used in metal mining and quarrying, and the remaining quarter was di about equally between constructlon work and miscellaneous uses. Many obsorbingly interesting services to man are hidden behind the miscellaneous classification. Ex- plosives are used among other ways in channel deepening, {0 produce “echo waves” in the acientific “div- ing rods” of the oil prospector, to aid in draining swamps, to blow up |levees for emergency flood pro- | tection, to fight great fires, to de. | stroy the bodies of dead animals, to | “shoot” oil wells, to eend up signal | rockets and fireworks, to cast life } lines to ships in distress, to break up {ice jams, log jams, and icebergs, and to prepare holes for the planting of trees, Use Began in Tyrol | Man's discovery of explosives 15 | not definitely known. Records do not | bear out the widely held opinion that |the Chinese invented gunpowder. | Pyrotechnic substances such as | Greek Fire or “wild fire” were used {in the carly and middle centuries of |the Christian Era to frighten ene- mies or to set fire to their ships. But one of the first definite recipes for | gunpowder appears in the writings the thirteenth On a Wave of Spellbinding, Breath Taking Bargains Such as Never Have or Will Be Se: Al YOUR| ed | idea of using gunpowder to blast a century, The first recorded use to propel mimsels from cannons was in Florence in 1326, Perhaps the mast interesting chapter in the history of explosives was written one hundred years later in Southern Tyrol, now a part of northern Italy. In the first quarter of the fifteenth century Sigismund, Archduke of Tyrol, conceived the better road through the gorge of the Eisak (now the Isarco). This, the first known use of an explosive for a constructive purpose, was a shot that has had might reverberations around the world. . The explosive type of engine, ‘which has advanced man with giant | strides as a power user, depends on | substances that are not themselves explosives. These are the liquids gasoline, keroscne, alcehol, benzol, and fairly heavy petroleum deriva- tives. But these non-explosive sub- | stances, when vaporized and mixed {with air, become rather powerful explosives, capable, however, of be- ing harnessed to turn man's ma- | chinery. In automobiles alone there | {are explosive cngines in the United | States aggregating more than half a | billion horsepower. Tractor engines, | stationary gasoline engines, and Diessel engines carry the total welll toward the billion mark. College Helps Mills Create Better Paper Orono, Me., Feb, 3. M—To its work of educating students one de- [vartment of the University of Maine ‘s Again, has added the task of helping dustrics improve their products. The department of chemical en- |ture and ink. Other gineering in the college of technole- gy is assisting Maine pulp and pa: per mills to solve their problems. help one company obtain pnpt‘t[ One company has been scsorded with the proper resistance to mois- | experiments | were conducted to determine which | grade of tissue paper was best for | wrapping silverware. A tissué was Under the direction of Prof. Paul | sought that would prevent the sil- D. Bray tests were earried out u:1 ver from taraishing. use of the university's “wet ma- chine,” a piece of apparatus useful in conducting research im paper | making. READ CLASSIFIED ADS HERALD FOR BEST RESULTS Made to be Sold for at Least $2 A Special One Time Concession Makes This Low Price Possible SLIPS Beautiful lustrous slips of rayon and cotton—shadow proof, exceptionally well made—straps of self material. A maker of high priced slips permitted us to buy for you a limited number of these $2 garments. Only while the stock lasta. 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