Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 2.djvu/869

 863 FEDERAL REPORTER. �In regard to this experiment it is to Le oLserved that it had the characteristics of ordinary blasting. The blast was at the bottom of the hole. The hole was filled by the cartridge 12 feet, about one-third of its depth, the proportion to com- mon blasting. There was an open space above of about 36 square feet. It might have been expected that the rock be- tween the blast and that open space would have been broken and lifted, if not blown out. A muoh greater quantity of rock has been moved in some cases. The second blast below seems to indicate sach an intention. However this may have been, Thomas' was a single experiment. He never repeated it. Though he sunk many wells afterwards, he dug them of the ordinary size — six feet in diameter — and, on reaching rock, blew out the bottom by ordinary blasting. It seems never to have occurred to him, or to any person who saw it. that it was a process that was useful, or that could beapplied to artesian wells hundreds of feet deep, some of them 1,500 or more, of uniform bore from the surface of the ground. Though it was tried in public, and was somewhat remarkable in its character, it never suggested to Mr. Thomas, or to any one, that it could be applied to increase the productiveness of on wells, though some sucoessful process of causing explo- sions at particular points in such wells was very much needed and very much oonsidered. It may, we think, very properly be denominated an abandoned experiment, never perfected so as to reveal the process Eoberts afterwards discovered. �Of the Boltze explosion we propose to say nothing more than we said in Roberts v. Diekey. Maillifert's blasting was upon the surface, and though it showed water tamping to be useful and effective in some eircunistances, it bore no resem- blance to the process exhibited in the complainant's patent. It may be that water tamping, or the resistance of a body of water above a blast, had been known before Eoberts applied it in his process, but water tamping is but one element of that process. �The other alleged anticipations of Eoberts' invention re- quire but brief notice. The first oil well was bored by Col. Drake, in August, 1859. In the September following A. W. ����