Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!rochester!ken
From: ken@cs.rochester.edu (Ken Yap)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: Luck (Was: Re: Zap, fry, and sizzle)
Message-ID: <1990Mar5.065710.22094@cs.rochester.edu>
Date: 5 Mar 90 06:57:10 GMT
References: <IZwNThu00VQc0GOWF1@andrew.cmu.edu> <1990Mar5.063040.21771@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Reply-To: ken@cs.rochester.edu
Organization: University of Rochester Computer Science Department
Lines: 13
Address: Rochester, NY 14627, (716) 275-1448

|Alfred Nobel made all of his money from his invention of dynamite, which
|is a tame version of nitroglycerine.  Neat nitroglycerine is extremely
|unstable, and it takes very little shock or heat to detonate it.  By

It is (was?) very quirky stuff too. I was reading about the
construction of the Union Pacific railroad. While the Central Pacific
stuck to raw manpower, the Union Pacific was innovative and tried
nitroglycerine (which was more effective than blasting powder) but not
without terrible accidents. One nitro explosion demolished an entire
powder shed but some other crates of nitro near the blast didn't even
go off.

Oops, this is straying from electronics...