Chapter 10 Chapter Ten Twenty-five Million Friends and One Enemy

The American public was fascinated by the smallest detail of the Cannon Club's plans.They pay daily attention to the discussions of the Executive Committee.The simplest preparations for this great experiment, the numerical problems posed in the plan, the mechanical problems to be solved, in a word, all the progress of the work" aroused their great enthusiasm. There was a little more than a year between the beginning of the work and the completion of the experiments, but there was no shortage of exciting events during that time.The selection of the foundations, the making of the sand molds, the casting of the Columbian guns, the very dangerous work of charging the powder, all this aroused the curiosity of the public.After the cannonball is fired, it only takes a few tenths of a second to disappear. Only a few people with special rights can see what its condition will be like, how it will travel in space, and how it will reach the moon.It is, therefore, the details of the preparation and execution of the experiments which are of real interest to the public.

But the purely scientific taste of the experiment was now interrupted by an accident: Stimulation, suddenly became like fire like tea. We know how many admirers and friends the "Barbican Project" won for its author.However, no matter how many these venerable admirers, after all, can not include all people.There is but one man in the states of the United States who opposes the experiments of the Cannon Club, and who attacks it violently at every opportunity, perhaps in the nature of mankind, and Barbicane is more sensitive to his disapproval than to the approval of all. New armor.The chairman of the Gun Club lives by drilling, and the captain lives by keeping him from drilling.Therefore, they are constantly fighting, and this struggle finally turns into a personal enmity.Nicholl often appeared in Barbicane's dreams in the form of invulnerable iron armor, smashing him to pieces, and Barbicane also broke into Nicholl's dreams like a cannonball, piercing him into two transparent holes. hole.

However, although the two men proceeded along two divergent lines, and though all the laws of geometry remained, the two scholars were able to meet at last;Fortunately, a distance of fifty or sixty miles separated him from Iran, which was a blessing for these two citizens who had done so much to their country, and their friends were in the middle, setting up such a There are so many obstacles that they will never meet together. Now these two inventors, which one can win?No one knows, the achievements of the two sides make it difficult to make a fair judgment, but it seems that in the end, the iron armor always gives way to the shells.

But referees are always in doubt.In the last few experiments, the conical shell of the dagger was inserted like a pin into Nicholl's steel plate; His opponent was not so contemptuous, but this one later switched to the 600-pound ordinary conical grenade, and the captain lost his advantage again.To tell the truth, although this shell has only ordinary speed, it breaks, penetrates, and blows up the best iron armor. Things had developed to this stage at that time, and victory seemed to belong to the shells, but on the day the war ended, Nicholl completed a new type of forged iron armor!This is a masterpiece, it can challenge all the cannonballs in the world.

The captain transported it to the proving ground in Washington, and asked the chairman of the cannon club to smash it.Now that peace was established, Barbicane was unwilling to experiment. At this point Nicholl was furious, and he proposed that any shell be shot at his plates, solid, hollow, round, or conical, he would accept.The chairman refused all of them, and he was unwilling under any circumstances to jeopardize his final achievement. Nicholl was irritated by the indescribable stubbornness of the other party, and he planned to seduce Barbicane and let him take advantage of him in every way.He proposed to place his plates two hundred yards from the cannon.Barbicane still refused.What about a hundred yards?Not even seventy-five yards.

"Fifty yards, then," cried the captain through the newspaper, "or twenty-five yards, and I'll stand behind the steel plate!" Barbicane informed him that Captain Nicholl was standing in front of the steel, and he did not shoot anymore. Nicholl, receiving this answer, could no longer restrain himself; and attacked Barbicane's personality; he said in a roundabout way that it was inseparable from cowardice, and that the man who refused to fire a cannonball was probably frightened. , in short, the inventors of the cannon, who are now fighting six miles away, have carefully replaced their personal guts with mathematical formulas, and, in addition, from all the laws of combat technology, quietly hide behind steel plates and so on. A man who shoots a cannonball is always as brave as a man who fires a cannonball.

"To these cynicisms Barbicane answered nothing: perhaps he did not pay attention at all, for at the time his attention was entirely absorbed by the calculations of his great plan. After his famous speech at the Gun Club, the captain's rage was almost on the verge of breaking out.Anger mixed with intense jealousy and a sense of genuine powerlessness!How to invent something better than the 900-foot Columbian gun!What iron armor can withstand a 20,000-pound shell!Nicholl "has been shot", at first he seems to have been smitten to the ground, reduced to powder, and annihilated, then he rises up again, determined to smash the plan with his weighty arguments.

He attacked the work of the Gun Club violently; he published many letters, which the papers did not refuse to publish.He tried to destroy Barbicane's career scientifically.At the beginning of the battle, he found all kinds of reasons to cheer, but to be honest, his reasons were often either specious or not up to standard. At first, Barbicane's figures were violently attacked. Nicholl tried to use a+b to prove the error of his calculation, accusing him of not understanding the basic principles of ballistics.Leaving aside other mistakes, according to Nicholl's calculations, it is absolutely impossible for any object to have a velocity of twelve thousand yards per second; Such a heavy shell can never pass through the edge of the earth's atmosphere!Not even eight miles!

To take a step back, assuming that this velocity has been achieved, and that this velocity is sufficient, even then, the shell cannot resist the pressure of the gases released by the burning of 1.6 million pounds of gunpowder. Moreover, even if it can resist this pressure , could not stand such a high temperature, and as soon as it left the muzzle of the Colombian gun, it melted into boiling molten iron, which fell like a heavy rain on the heads of those mindless spectators. Barbicane saw these attacks without even wincing, and went on to his work. So Nicholl started from other aspects.This experiment is useless from every point of view, aside from that, he said, neither to the citizens who were there to see such a damned work, nor to the city around the ominous cannon. He said that this experiment is very dangerous: at the same time, he reminded everyone that if the cannonball cannot reach its destination, it is obviously impossible for it to reach the destination. It must fall on the ground. The squared acceleration adds to its weight, and there must be some place on earth that will be wrecked by the fall of such a heavy thing, and in such cases the government should intervene, if not infringe upon the rights of free citizens, never Because one person insists on going his own way, the safety of the public is threatened.

We can see how far Captain Nicholl has exaggerated. He alone has such a view.So no one paid attention to his ominous prophecy.Since he was willing, everyone let him shout as much as he wanted, until he was hoarse.He was the defender of a doomed case: he was listened to; but no one listened, and as for the admirers of the chairman of the Cannon Club, he did not take away a single one.But Barbicane did not even bother to refute his opponent's arguments. Nicholl crouched in his last dugout, and since he had spent all his efforts and failed to win the case, he decided to spend money.In Richmond's Inquisitor he successively proposed bets with Barbicane openly, each time betting more and more, and the following is his invitation to bet.

His bet is: 1. It is impossible to raise enough funds for the experiment of the Cannon Club, otherwise, I would like to lose... 1000 US dollars. 2. The plan to cast a cannon with a length of 900 feet is impossible and will not be successful, otherwise I would like to lose... 2000 US dollars. 3. The Colombian gun cannot be filled with gunpowder. At the same time, the low-nitrogen nitrocellulose will automatically ignite under the pressure of the shell, otherwise it is willing to lose... 3000 US dollars. 4. The Colombian gun will explode the first time it is fired, or it will lose $4,000. 5. The cannonball will not fly six miles away, it will fall in a few seconds after being shot, or you will lose... $5,000. We could see that this was a considerable sum, and that the captain's perils were caused by his insurmountable obstinacy.The total amount was no less than fifteen thousand dollars. Although the stakes were high, he received on October 19th a very simple letter stamped with sealant: Accepted. Barbican Baltimore, October 18