444 



POPULAR SC-IENCE MONTHLY. 



THE APPLICATIONS OF EXPLOSIVES. 



By CHARLES E. MUNKUE, 



PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY, COLUMBIAN UNIVERSITY. 



[Concluded. ] 



IT is apparent that the range of even the most highly perfected 

 torpedo is comparatively short, while their accuracy of travel is 

 low. Besides, their j^ropelling, controlling, and discharging mech- 

 anisms are complicated, delicate, and easily deranged, they are 

 very expensive, and not only the explosive chamber but the entire 

 system is destroyed in use. The superiority of gunpowder guns 

 as a means of throwing projectiles to great distances with accu- 

 racy is well known, and their capacity for safely and efficiently 

 projecting shells filled with gunpowder has long been demonstrated. 

 It was obvious that as the superior destructive power of dynamite, 

 gun cotton, and other high explosives became known and their 

 eomniereial manufacture was assured, attempts would be made 



to employ them as 

 bursting charges for 

 shells. Experiments 

 to demonstrate how 

 this might be done 

 and what effects could 

 be expected were be- 

 gun more than forty 

 years ago, and have 

 been continued in 

 many different places from time to time ever since; but while it 

 has proved that small charges might be fired with low velocities 

 and pressures in ovdiiuiry shell, and large charges in specially con- 

 structed shell or in specially prepared forms of charge, with com- 

 parative safety so far as the premature explosion of the explosive 

 charge itself is concerned, yet these bodies are so sensitive to the 

 shock resulting from the discharge of the propellant, the heat gen- 

 erated by its combustion, and that arising from friction in the 

 " set-back " of the shell charge and the rotation imparted by the 

 rifling, that they can not be safely fired from modern high-power 

 guns under service conditions, particularly as these explosives all 

 require that the shell shall be fitted with a detonator in order that 

 tlie charge may be fully exploded. The most promising results 

 with explosives of this class have been obtained with compressed 

 wet gun cotton, which has been |>;ickc<l di redly in the shell in 

 rigid blocks completely filling the shell cavity, or cut in cubes and 



GuN-CoTTox Shell akteu Impact. 



