“I am employed in exploding the Nitro-Glycerin in the holes drilled by the miners in the Oil Creek Tunnel, Pa. I used Nitro-Glycerin from the Lake Shore Nitro-Glycerin Works, which is very different to that of the United States Blasting Oil Company, of New York, and requires a different mode of explosion. I do not use any of the methods described in Nobel’s patent of October 24, and re-issued April 13, 1869, for exploding, for the methods therein described would only explode it, if at all, which I doubt, by hazard, and not with certainty, owing to the peculiar properties of the Lake Shore Nitro-Glycerin as compared with what I have seen and used as the Shaffner, or Nobel’s Nitro-Glycerin. I endorse all the previous evidence as to the difference between the Nobel or Shaffner Nitro-Glycerin, and that made under Mowbray’s patent. The method I have used to explode this Nitro-Glycerin, at the Oil City Tunnel, consists in what is known as the Austrian battery and electric fuse and fulminating shell; that is, an electric machine, whose exciting plate is made of ebonite or hard rubber, with insulated and conducting wire terminals, which are from ¹/₁₆ to ¹/₃₂ of an inch apart, and between those terminal points a priming composition is inserted, through which the electric spark being passed, such priming ignites, giving a flame (insufficient to explode the Nitro-Glycerin, but) sufficient to inflame a fulminating compound, of which there is a heavy charge, and this fulminating compound being exploded by the priming composition, explodes the Nitro-Glycerin. I have never used the method of exploding with gunpowder as described in the Nobel patent, No. 50,617, in the tunnel aforesaid, nor elsewhere, but I have witnessed attempts to explode the Nitro-Glycerin used under Mowbray’s Patent by means of fuse and gunpowder, as described by Nobel, where that method failed.”
[Illustration: Sinking the Central Shaft.]
“I am engaged in the business of manufacturing electric fuses and introducing explosive compounds to contractors, miners and torpedo men. I have carefully examined the patents in question re-issued to Tal. P. Shaffner, and, I find, by the modes therein described, it is impossible to fire with certainty, and simultaneously, more than two mines charged with Nitro-Glycerin by any of the methods described in said four re-issued patents; and to effect any explosion of Nitro-Glycerin by any of the methods therein described, and materials delivered to the public by the assignees of the inventor Nobel, it is absolutely essential that the Nitro-Glycerin should be confined as described in the re-issues in question. I have also carefully examined the patent issued to George M. Mowbray, dated July 27th, 1869, and find that the process therein described of exploding Nitro-Glycerin, does away with the necessity for confining Nitro-Glycerin in order to explode it. I endorse previous evidence from my own experience in regard to exploding Nitro-Glycerin when unconfined under Mowbray’s system. I have also manufactured and delivered upward of twenty thousand fuses to the contractors of the Hoosac Tunnel, capable of exploding Nitro-Glycerin when unconfined, at said Hoosac Tunnel. I have been present when the modes described in the re-issues of the Nobel patent have been carefully practised, and entirely failed to fire Nitro-Glycerin, and in one instance immediately after the failure of the Nobel system, I inserted a fuse of the exact description, and with the electric appliances as described in Geo. M. Mowbray’s patent, No. 93,113, dated July 27th, 1869, and the result was a successful explosion. The modes described in the Nobel re-issues, Nos. 3,377, 3,378, 3,379 and 3,380, have been abandoned by all parties with whom I am acquainted, who have important works to carry through, requiring Nitro-Glycerin to be exploded, and particularly by the said Tal. P. Shaffner himself, as I have manufactured, sold and delivered to said Shaffner and others, the apparatus and the exploding electrical fuses for firing Nitro-Glycerin made by said Shaffner, and Nitro-Glycerin made by the Lake Shore Nitro-Glycerin Company, which said fuses or electrical exploders, involve a principle of firing Nitro-Glycerin of great practical importance and very recent development, viz., the principle of concussion, so as to effect the explosion of the entire mass of Nitro-Glycerin instantaneously, without requiring the explosion to be transmitted from particle to particle, in this respect differing very materially from the methods described in the Nobel re-issues above referred to, which require, first, confinement, and then heat and pressure, to be developed in the presence of the Nitro-Glycerin.”