Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 April 1886 — The Explosion of Dynamite. [ARTICLE]

The Explosion of Dynamite.

The chronoscope of Captain Noble showed that explosion is transmitted through trains of dynamite at the rate of 20,000 to 24,000 feet per second. At this rate the explosion of a cartridge a foot long must only occupy the 24,000 th part of a second. A ton of dynamite cartridges of the usual size, about seven-eighths of an inch in diameter, laid end to end in a line, would stretch a mile, and the whole train could be exploded in the one-fourth part of a second by firing a cartridge at either of the ends. If fired in the middle of the line, the explosion would be transmitted both ways, and would occupy only the eighth part of a second. The facility with which dynamite can be fired in trains offers great advantage in many engineering operations,- such as where it is required to blow down an arch or a wall. It is enough to lay a train of cartridges along the crown of the arch, or along the bottom of the wall, and explode one cartridge in the usual way with a detonator. The whole train goes off instaqpy. The enormous velocity with which dynamite explodes explains the great violence of its actidn, and the tremendous local rupturing effects of even small quantities of it exploded in the open, and without being inclosed in. a case of any kind. The detonation of a cartridge in the 24,000 th part of a second must produce an enormous instantaneous pressure on .the spot on which it explodes. For such a sudden explosion the pressure of the atmosphete itself is sufficient tamping.— Scientific American.