FINDING UNEXPLODED SHELLS

Taihape Daily Times, 20 November 1918, Page 5

FINDING UNEXPLODED SHELLS

o When a shell falls on to sodden 1 ground, or happens to possess a not very sensitive fuse,, it will often bury itself without exploding. ; The battlefields of France and Flanders are said to be peppered with such hidden and unexploded shells, which, constitute a latent danger for the future, when the armies have retired and restored the land, to the farmers. For one can easily imagine what would happen should a ploughshare come into contact with one of these explosive projectiles. How can this' danger be averted? Such was the question which ,M. Mirman, the Prefect of. the Department of Meurthe-ct-Moselle, asked M. Gutton. a professor at the Nancy Faculty of Science, and the answer, says the Organiser, is now before us in the form of a very ingenious electric al apparatus, which has been thoroughly tested, and found to be eminently

satisfactory. This electric shell-finder which is very easy to handle, enables two persons to explore two and a-half acres in about three hours. It, is composed of two flat coils arranged in , series on the same circuit and through ' which an alternating current inducing two neighbouring coils passes. The wires in these latter coils are twisted

in such a way that at every moment the electromotive forces are present there respectively in a contrary way. When a mass of iron is in the neighbourhood of one of the pairs of coils it causes a dissymmetry which prevents the compensation, whereupon the telephone gives .forth' a 'Rotund. Slowly walking over the field to bo explored, the assistant slightly raises the two pairs of coils of the balance above the ground, whilst the observer, with telephonic receivers clipped to his cars, and the box containing the battery, the condenser, the trembler, and the regulatng system/ swung round his waist, follows him a few yards in. the rear. It has been used with, perfect success. /..,