548 



NITROLEUM. 



On the 5th of November, 1865, some of this 

 oil, contained in large bottles and packed in a 

 box with sawdust, having been (it appears) 

 shipped from Germany, passing under the name 

 of" chemical oil," and which had been for some 

 time stored in a room of the Wyoming Hotel, 

 on Greenwich Street, New York, was found to 

 be emitting a peculiar and offensive odor, and 

 an appearance of red fumes or smoke ; when, 

 upon being carried hastily into the street, it al- 

 most immediately exploded, with such violence 

 as to do considerable damage, and so that box 

 and contents had alike completely disappeared. 



The cause of the explosion in this case, con- 

 sidered by some to have been a spontaneous 

 combustion of the oil, was more probably a 

 spontaneous decomposition of some portion of 

 it, producing gases and hence pressure a 

 change favored by heating of the contents of 

 the box. 



A considerable quantity of nitro-glycerine 

 (some 70 cases) which, as was afterward ascer- 

 tained, had previously been transported from 

 Germany by way of Hamburg to Hull, and 

 thence by rail to Liverpool, and which was 

 then shipped on the screw-steamer " European," 

 to Aspinwall, exploded at the wharf at the 

 latter place, April 3, 1866, blowing up the 

 steamer, destroying many lives, and doing 

 much damage to the shipping near, and to 

 buildings in the adjacent part of the town. If 

 in this case the oil exploded through partial 

 decomposition, that condition was doubtless 

 favored by the heating in a tropical latitude of 

 the ship's hold and contents. On the 16th of 

 the same month, another fearful explosion, and 

 which could only be traced to two boxes just 

 landed from a steamer and showing traces of 

 containing some oil, occurred at San Francisco ; 

 several persons near at the time were either 

 killed or badly injured, and the damage to prop- 

 erty was estimated at $200,000. Many other 

 serious accidents from this agent have occurred 

 in Europe and this country. One, which took 

 place at Rochester, N. Y., so lately as Decem- 

 ber 4, 1866, killing a workman and injuring 

 several others, is instructive in view of the fact 

 that it must have been caused by the mere 

 concussion of the air within a tunnel, consequent 

 on the discharge of a powder-blast, and that 

 although the can of nitro-glycerine (25 Ibs.) 

 was at a distance of 50 feet from the blast, and 

 in a cavity in the side of the tunnel. 



Mr. Nobel, who has been in this country, and 

 has experimented here with the blasting oil, 

 names four principal reasons for the enormous 

 explosive force it exerts: 1, its* great specific 

 gravity, so that the quantity of material in a 

 given space is increased ; 2, its richness in oxy- 

 gen, securing complete combustion ; 3, its per- 

 fect gasification, leaving no solid residue ; and 

 4, the extraordinary suddenness of its explo- 

 sion. He estimates that gunpowder, by com- 

 bustion and expansion, gives practically a vol- 

 ume of gases 800 times that of the solid mass ; 

 but that nitro-glycerine, through the same 



causes, should probably give a volume of gases 

 10,400 times that of the oil itself. In the 

 same connection, it is stated that the now 

 common mode of exploding the oil is by means 

 of a safety-fuse, having a heavily-charged per- 

 cussion cap at the end a mode patented in 

 France and some other countries. Scientific 

 American, Nov. 18, 1865. 



In the journal just quoted, November 24, 1 S66, 

 Col. Shaffner has a communication in reference 

 to his experiments, made in August of the same 

 year, in blasting in the Hoosic Tunnel, the rock 

 being described as solid massed mica and quartz, 

 with few seams, and the strata lying against the 

 progress. He exploded the nitro-glycerine by 

 aid of electricity, and succeeded in advancing 

 much more rapidly with it than with gunpow- 

 der, both in the " bench," or bottom enlarge- 

 ment, and in the "heading ; " and he concludes 

 that " the Hoosic Tunnel can be finished in less 

 than one-half the time, and for less than one- 

 half the expense, by using nitro-glycerine." 

 Col. Shaffner has estimated the explosive force 

 of nitro-glycerine at 212,000 Ibs. per square 

 inch. 



Since the earlier of the disasters previously 

 named, it has been urged that the transporta- 

 tion of nitroleum should be subjected to the 

 same restrictions as is that of fulminating mer- 

 cury and other like compounds. Meanwhile, 

 facts of such nature appearing to necessitate 

 the abandonment of the extensive use of nitro- 

 leum as an explosive agent, two modes of ob- 

 viating such necessity have been proposed. 

 One of these is that of preparing the compound 

 where it is to be used, a plan to which the con- 

 siderable excess of materials required the acids 

 alone being of about three times the volume of 

 the product obtained can only be an objection 

 in cases such as those requiring overland trans- 

 portation to great distance, and in unsettled 

 regions ; the other is that of covering for the 

 time by certain sorts of intermixture, as is done 

 with gunpowder, the explosive properties of 

 the oil itself. 



Of the two plans named, the first was during 

 the spring or early summer of 1866 adopted by 

 MM. Schmitt and Dietsch, in working the great 

 quarries of sandstone in the valley of the Zorn, 

 lower Rhine; and at the time of the account 

 given (Gomptes Rendus, July 23 Philosophical 

 Magazine, Sept., 1866), it had been in success- 

 ful practice for six weeks. The process of prep- 

 aration, devised with the aid of M. Keller, and 

 established in a wooden cabin in one of the 

 quarries, is as follows : In a vessel of sand- 

 stone, placed in cold water, fuming nitric acid 

 of 49-50 B. (1.51-1.53) is mixed with twice 

 its weight of the most concentrated sulphuric 

 acid. Commercial glycerine, but free from 

 lime or lead, is evaporated in an iron pot to 

 30-31 B. (1.26-1.27), the liquid then prop- 

 erly being syrupy when quite cold. A work- 

 man places 3,300 grammes (about 7.3 Ibs.) of 

 the mixed acids, well cooled, in a glass flask, a 

 sandstone pot or porcelain basin, set in <* bath 



