The Shot-Tower the Result of a Dream.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 362, 24 April 1889, Page 3

The Shot- Tower the Result of a Dream.

There was once a mechanic at Bristol, England, who had a queer dream. Watte was his name, and he was by trade a shot maker. The making of the little leaden pellets was then slow, laborious, and, consequently costly process. Watts had to take great bars of lead and pound them out into sheets of a thickness about equal to the diameter of the shot he desired to make. Then he cut the sheets into little cubes, •which he placed in a revolving barrel or box jand rolled until the edges wore off from constant ' friction,, .and. jthe4ittle cubes became spheroids. .__Wafcts h&d often racked his brain trying to devise a better scheme, r but, in xvain. ( , 3?ina}ly, after an , eveinn.g . spent- vvith some -jolly companions at the ale-Jiouse, he. went home and turned, into b;ed*. 'He soon fell into" a.deep jilumber, but the liquor evidently did not agreexwith him, for he had q, bad dream. He thought he was out again with the " boys." They were all trying to find their way home when it began to rain shot. Beautiful glob'uleB or lead, polished and shining, fell in a tprrent, and compelled .him and his bibulous companions to draw their heavy limbs to a place of shelter. In the morning, when Watts arose, he remembered the dream. He thought about it all day, and wondered what shape molten lead would take in falling a distance through the air. At last, he could rest no longer ; he carried a ladleful of the hot metal up into the steeple of the church of St. Mary of Redcliffe and dropped it into the moat below. Descending, he took from the bottom of the shallow pool several handiuls of perfect shot far superior to any he had ever seen. Watts's fortune was made, for he had conceived the idea of the shot-tower, which has ever since been the only means employed in the manufacture of the little missiles so much used in war and sport. — ' Chicago Mail.'

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