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Show GIANT POWDER TESTS. As everything connected with modern explosives is just now o peculiar interest to the public in this locality, we condense from the Call a report of some giant powder tests made at the instance ot the city authorities of San Francisco by the Giant Powder company of that city at their works, six miles from the city hall. It appears that the terrible explosion in this city last week has directed the attention of most communities com-munities to this subject, and the San Franciscans wanted to be sure that they were safe from the eficcta of a possible explosion: IS GIANT rOWDER SAFE? The first experiment was made to demonstrate the perfect safely of the explosive under heavy concussion. A box containing fifty pounds of the powder was placed under a derrick and an iron weight of 100 pounds allowed to tall upon it from a height of thirty feet. When the weight was hoisted to its place there was a general gene-ral scattering on the pjrt of the bupervisors, but the owners of the works remained close by the box, which contained suthcient of the material ma-terial to an?'J;iiiate a building as large as ttie city nail. The weight fell and utterly crushed the box and the cartridges, cart-ridges, and tho experiment was repeated re-peated a number of times, with no other etlect than to reduce the box and its contents, without explosion, to a shapeless mass. A number of the crushed cartridges were then picked up and placed in a cigar box for future use, after which ilr. Judson, under whose supervision the experiments were conducted, picking up a sound cartridge placed a lighted cigar at the cud, and holding it in bis hand suffered suf-fered it to burn. It consumed with a fuzing sound, but produced no other eillct. The whole mass was then ignited, ig-nited, and in on instant it burnt into a fierce name, the brightness of which was simply dazzling, and the intense heatdrovo the party away. Tho combustion com-bustion was over in a few seconds, and was altcuded with harmless results. |