United States or Argentina ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Whitehead torpedoes, be it known, are mechanical fish of machined steel, self-propelling and self-steering, actuated by a small air engine, and carrying in their "war heads" a charge of over two hundred pounds of guncotton, and in their blunt noses a detonating cap to explode it on contact. At Forsythe's word, Kelly turned a lever on the tube, and the contained torpedo dived gently overboard.
The ruined blocks of the wide thoroughfare formed a trench through the clustered structures that the conflagration, wild as it was, could not leap. Engines pumping brine through Fort Mason from the bay completed the little work that the guncotton had left, but for three days the haggard-eyed firemen guarded the flickering ruins.
Explosives, such as gunpowder and guncotton, are also ignited by the electric spark from an induction coil or the incandescence of a wire. It consists of a box of wood or metal primed with gunpowder or other explosive, and a platinum wire P soldered to a pair of stout copper wires W, insulated with gutta-percha.
Chloroform, nitrous oxide gas, and ether had been placed at the service of the physician in saving life, and the revolver, guncotton, and nitroglycerine added to the agencies for slaughter. New metals, chemicals, and elements had become available in large numbers, gases had been liquefied and solidified, and the range of useful heat and cold indefinitely extended.
The chemical mixture of some of the elements gives us our high explosives gunpowder, guncotton, and the like; their organic mixture gives a slower kind of explosive bread, meat, milk, fruit, which, when acted upon by the vital forces of the body, yield the force that is the equivalent of the work the body does.
I got up a motor and put it on the scales and tried a large number of different things and contrivances connected to the motor, to see how it would lighten itself on the scales. I got some data and made up my mind that what was needed was a very powerful engine for its weight, in small compass. So I conceived of an engine employing guncotton.
I was myself, at the pressing and personal invitation of King Constantine, the first to visit Nigrita, where the Bulgarian General, before leaving, had the inhabitants locked into their houses, and then with guncotton and petroleum burned the place to the ground. Here 470 victims were burned alive, mostly old folk, women, and children.
When we reached Guantanamo in the State of Texas, Captain McCalla's boats and launches had thoroughly explored and dragged the lower bay, and had taken out safely no less than thirteen contact mines, each containing about one hundred pounds of guncotton. The upper bay was still in the possession of the Spaniards; but its control was not a matter of any particular importance.
In the building where men and women were hired, each applicant passed a desk where they were quietly surveyed by two unobstrusive gentlemen in indifferent business suits who eyed them carefully. Around the fuse department, where all day girls and women handled guncotton and high-explosive powder, a special guard was posted, day and night.
And they with automatic pistols and wishful of an excuse to use them, not to mention the nitroglycerin and guncotton bombs they'll be carrying a divilish bad thing to have kicking round in a free-for-all fight?" he queried. Terry's face showed his deep disappointment.
Word Of The Day