Today in Technology History
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December 13
The inventor of the dynamite gun -- a peculiar weapon that had its heyday in the 1890s -- was born 153 years ago.
Edmund Louis Gray Zalinski was born on December 13, 1849, in what is now Poland. His family moved to New York when he was four years old. He was still in school when the U.S. Civil War began in 1861, but by the time the war ended, Zalinski was a lieutenant in the artillery with experience in several battles -- even though he was not yet sixteen years old.
Zalinski chose to stay in the military, and during the 1870s he studied various aspects of military technology. In the 1880s, he became known as an inventor, having developed a telescopic sight for aiming artillery, a new kind of bayonet, and equipment for making trenches. He was also a world-class authority on explosives.
One dynamite gun from a battery protecting San Francisco a century ago. Click to enlarge. Zalinski's most important work related to the dynamite gun. Dynamite, a powerful explosive invented by Alfred Nobel in the 1860s, couldn't be shot out of normal cannon since the heat of the discharge would make the dynamite explode before it left the cannon. The solution was to use an air gun -- a gun that used compressed air to launch projectiles. Zalinski didn't invent the first air gun, but he improved air guns enough to make them practical for hurling dynamite, so he can be considered the inventor of the dynamite gun.
Dynamite guns came in different sizes. The biggest ones had barrels 15 inches in diameter; these were used for coastal defenses in a few places and were also mounted on an experimental cruiser, USS Vesuvius. The compressed air came from steam-driven pneumatic compressors. These big, quiet guns could accurately hurl 200 pounds of dynamite about two miles -- an impressive range, although not as good as some conventional artillery at the time. A much smaller portable version of the dynamite gun was used in the Spanish-American War.
Although Zalinski had made dynamite guns practical, they suffered from certain technical problems and faced competition from other weapons and technologies that performed better. All interest in the weapons seems to have dried up around the turn of the century, and the few dynamite guns in use were soon sold or dismantled.
Zalinski died in 1909.
Related links:
Click here and here to read more about Zalinski and the dynamite gun.
Click here to read the entry for Zalinski in a nineteenth-century encyclopedia.
Click here and here for more about Vesuvius, the cruiser that was fitted with three big dynamite guns.
Click here to read about the smaller dynamite guns that were used in the Spanish-American War.
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