Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 January 1892 — Enormous Power of Water. [ARTICLE]

Enormous Power of Water.

The enormous power of a stream of water forced from a hydraulic nozzle, under from 200 to 300 feet or more of pressure, as sometimes used in hydraulic mining in this State, is something almost beyond belief. The quantity of water passing through these nozzles in a single day of mining is immense. A stream of 400 feet vertical pressure delivers a blow of upward of 500,000 pounds—equivalent to about 1,000 horse power. Louis Glass, who for sixteen years was superintendent of one of the large mines in this State, says that he has seen an eight-inch stream, under 311 feet of vertical pressure, move in a sluggish way a two-ton bowlder at a distance of twenty feet from the nozzle, and that the same stream, striking a rock of 500 pounds, would throw it as a man would throw a twentypound weight. “No man that ever lived,” adds Mr. Glass, “could stride a bar through one of these streams within twenty feet of discharge, and a human being struck by such a stream would be pounded into a shapeless mass.” Mr. Augustus J. Bowie, of this city, the author of a standard book on hydraulic mining, says it would be absolutely impossible to cut such a stream with an ax or to make an impression on it with any other instrument. Mr Bowie adds that, although never to his knowledge has a man been struck by a stream as it comes from the pipe, several accidents have occurred where miners were killed by very much smaller streams at a distance of 150 to 200 feet from the nozzle. Professor Christy says he has often tried to drive a crowbar into such a stream, and it felt as solid as a bar of iron, and, although he could feel the point of the crowbar enter the water for perhaps half and inch, the bar was thrown forward with such force that it was almost impossible to retain it in the grasp. An ax swung by the most powerful man alive could not penetrate the stream; yet it might be cut by the finger of a child, if the child were seated on a railway train moving parallel with the stream in the same direction and with the same velocity. That velocity would be considerably more than a mile a minute. The statements presented in the above summary will not astonish engineering experts; the average citizen, however, is accustomed to regard water as the least destructive liquid that can be put in motion, and he is familiar with no stronger manifestation of its power than the velvety touch of a stream from the city faucet. It might occur to a military man that such a powerful & agent might be made a most terrible military agent for offense or defense, at short range, if it could only be brought to bear, as indeed it might be, by a powerful steam engine in a beleaguered fort or on board a battleship with an enemy close alongside.— Great Divide.