Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 13.djvu/295

Rh in intensity, an addition of 30 per cent, in the larger charges producing no sensible difference in the sound. Were the sounds estimated by some physical means, instead of by the ear, the values of the sound would not, in my opinion, show a greater advance with the increase of material than that indicated by the foregoing numbers. Subsequent experiments rendered still more certain the effectiveness, as well as the economy, of small charges of gun-cotton.

It is an obvious corollary from the foregoing experiments that on our "nesses" and promontories, where the land is clasped on both sides for a considerable distance by the sea—where, therefore, the sound has to propagate itself rearward as well as forward—the use of the parabolic gun, or of the parabolic reflector, might be a disadvantage rather than an advantage. Here gun-cotton, exploded in the open, forms a most appropriate source of sound. This remark is especially applicable to such lightships as are intended to spread the sound all round them as from central foci. As a signal in rock-lighthouses, where neither siren, steam whistle, nor gun, could be mounted, and as a handy fleet-signal, dispensing with the lumber of special signal-guns, the gun-cotton will prove invaluable. But in most of these cases we have the drawback that local damage may be done by the explosion. The lantern of the rock-lighthouse might suffer from concussion near at hand, and though mechanical arrangements might be devised, both in the case of the lighthouse and of the ship's deck, to place the firing-point of the gun-cotton at a safe distance, no such arrangement could compete, as regards simplicity and effectiveness, with the expedient of a gun-cotton rocket. Had such a means of signaling existed at the Bishop's Rock Lighthouse, the ill fated Schiller might have been warned of her approach to danger ten, or it may be twenty, miles before she reached the rock which wrecked her. Had the fleet possessed such a signal, instead of the ubiquitous but ineffectual whistle, the Iron Duke and Vanguard need never have come into collision.

It was the necessity of providing a suitable signal for rock lighthouses, and of clearing obstacles which cast an acoustic shadow, that suggested the idea of the gun-cotton rocket to Sir Richard Collinson, Deputy Master of the Trinity House. That idea was to place a disk or short cylinder of the gun-cotton in the head of a rocket, the ascensional force of which should be employed to carycarry [sic] the disk to an elevation of 1,000 feet or thereabouts, where, by the ignition of a fuse associated with a detonator, the gun-cotton should be fired, sending its sound in all directions vertically and obliquely down upon earth and sea. The first attempt to realize this idea was made on the 18th of July, 1876, at the firework manufactory of the Messrs Brock, at Nunhead. Eight rockets were then fired, four being charged with 5 ounces and four with 7 ounces of gun-cotton. They ascended to a great height, and exploded with a very loud report in the air. On the 27th of July, the rockets were tried at Shoeburyness, the most noteworthy result on