[HN Gopher] Scottish Nitroglycerin and One Legged Stools (2014)
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Scottish Nitroglycerin and One Legged Stools (2014)
Author : theelous3
Score : 92 points
Date : 2020-10-03 12:16 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lateralscience.blogspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lateralscience.blogspot.com)
| [deleted]
| teddyh wrote:
| I liked this typo: " _A sample is taken of each lot of
| nitroglycerin when mad._ "
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I'm suspecting a meaning of "marked by uncontrolled
| excitement". Given deliberate language of the article
| otherwise.
|
| Suggesting freshly-brewed, not-yet settled nitroglycerine.
| teddyh wrote:
| I think that "when _made_ " would make more sense in context.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Apparently yes:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24673928
| [deleted]
| philipkglass wrote:
| It is "when made" in the original: https://babel.hathitrust.o
| rg/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015030656139&vi...
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Thanks. That settles it.
| war1025 wrote:
| I assumed the "mad" part was just some archaic term.
|
| Curious whether it does actually mean something or if it is
| just a typo.
| jccooper wrote:
| It's just a typo. The original has "made". I was expecting
| the text to be a bit more corrupt, but it looks clean and is
| probably not an OCR type, but a normal human one.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| It's listed as a form of made in the OED but without any
| examples close to the 19th century. Webster has this
| spelling.
| smcl wrote:
| Maybe that's where the erroneous "e" in "Ayreshire" was meant
| to be (note: should be Ayrshire)
| war1025 wrote:
| A bit random, my Grandma went to school in Ayrshire, Iowa
| [1], which I have to imagine was named after Ayrshire,
| Scotland.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayrshire,_Iowa
| Xophmeister wrote:
| OT, but has "tools" become a normalised suffix for anyone else?
| It took me a second parse at the title -- after wondering for
| longer than I'd like to admit at what "s-tools" were -- to
| realise it's referring to furniture.
| intrasight wrote:
| I'm surprised that there aren't more comments. This was an
| article both humorous and informative about creating something
| (dynamite) which made the modern world possible.
| Someone wrote:
| I'm not sure I can trust this site to be historically accurate,
| given http://lateralscience.blogspot.com/2013/02/victorian-
| product...
| philipkglass wrote:
| The OP article is a historical account from 1897. What you
| linked to is clearly marked as fiction:
|
| _" Victorian Production of One Ounce of Nitrogen
| Trichloride" is the first chapter of The Ernest Glitch
| Chronicles. A Novel by Roger Curry_
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Milking stools[1] (especially the strap-on variety) can also be
| one legged.
|
| > "[He'd] give a warning shout and run. So would everybody, you
| included."
|
| reminded me of MAXIM 3:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23503989
|
| [1] another reason for single-legged stools: less likely to trip
| you up if you need to jump quickly away from a kicking cow. I
| wouldn't be surprised if nitro factory staff prized that reason,
| but told management they used them to not fall asleep.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| I saw some bricklayers lay paving stones recently. A few tons
| of them. They also had strap-on single-legged stools and I was
| really surprised to see such a specific tool!
| teddyh wrote:
| The maxims are _The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective
| Mercenaries_ 1, the third of which is originally from the
| _Schlock Mercenary_ webcomic strip of November 1, 20092.
|
| 1.
| https://www.ovalkwiki.com/index.php/The_Seventy_Maxims_of_Ma...
|
| 2. https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2009-11-01
| michaelt wrote:
| I suspect "If you see the bomb squad running try to keep up"
| is a joke older than the internet.
| Gupie wrote:
| Maxim 3. An ordnance technician at a dead run outranks
| everybody
| analog31 wrote:
| My dad, a retired industrial chemist, told me many years ago
| about the one-legged stools. He worked for a company with a long
| history. It wasn't just nitroglycerine, but any reaction that
| required close monitoring. The way to scale up some reactions was
| just to build a whole row of reactors, with a worker at each one.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Standards, controls, corporate structures, standards, and
| communications emerged out of novel complex commercial
| organisations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, notably
| railroads (complex in space and time) and chemistry (complex in
| process and consequence). Studies of standards, communications,
| R&D, etc., fascinating for the sort of person fascinated by this
| sort of thing, focus strongly on such organisations and
| operations.
|
| The thermometer-watcher, and set of practices for avoiding
| incidental explosions and runaway heat would be examples of this.
|
| There's an interesting contrast, brought to mind with the focus
| on remote work, of autonomous working groups operating remotely
| an incommunicado for extended periods: merchant and military
| sailing ships, before the eras of radio and particularly of
| steam.
|
| Ship captains were not subject to Zoom calls, Slack channels,
| keyboard and video monitoring, or daily virtual stand-ups, from
| superiors. They operated autonomously, at distance, for days,
| weeks, months, even years at a time. They were given mission
| objectives and empowered to act as agents for their merchants or
| militaries with remote vendors, counterparties, countries, even
| novel cultures.
|
| And no, it didn't always go well. Mistakes were made, atrocities
| committed, misadventure encountered, fraud, abuse, and violence.
|
| For long periods, the distinction between "merchant', "sailor",
| and "pirate" was at best vague:
|
| https://www.etymonline.com/word/pirate
|
| https://www.etymonline.com/word/corsair
|
| But it was the best option available, and worked, after a
| fashion, until replaced as new capabilities emerged.
| jaclaz wrote:
| Some context:
|
| https://www.nobelprize.org/alfred-nobel/alfred-nobel-in-scot...
| philipkglass wrote:
| This is a partial transcription of an article from McClure's
| Magazine, August 1897 issue: "The Great Dynamite Factory at
| Ardeer." You can see it as originally printed here:
|
| https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015030656139&vi...
|
| The original has more pictures illustrating the text and is
| considerably longer. It goes on to describe much more about the
| explosives manufacturing complex than just the nitroglycerin
| production. It also describes a disastrous explosion that
| occurred just a week after the author visited in person.
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(page generated 2020-10-03 23:00 UTC)