Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 February 1893 — Photographing Flying Bullets. [ARTICLE]

Photographing Flying Bullets.

An English photographic journal has an interesting account of the manner in which photographs have been obtained of rifle bullets travelling at the rate of two thousand feet in a second. The source of illumination was the electric spark such as that given by the discharge of a Leyden jar. The camera and lens were dispensed with, and the gelatine plate impressed direct with the shadow of the missile as it traversed the intervening space between the plate and the light source. One problem was the discovery of the best means of causing the bullet to turn on the electricity for its own portraiture. At first two copper wires were, placed in the path of the projectile, the notion being that the bullet itself would make the necessary metallic bridge between them. But the wires were shotaway without doing what was expected of them. Lead wire was then substituted with success. One very curious result was that the process produced a picture of the disturbance of the air by the passage of the bullet Any solid body traveling through the air must, of course, push the air before it. The picture of flying bullets show clearly the curves formed by the disturbed air, both before and behind the flying projectile.