by Jerry
The inside of the crater and the surroundings are strewn with iron meteorites, over eighty tons of which are known to have been picked up. This is more than has been found in all the rest of the world.
Not long ago, the United States Smelting and Milling Company carried on extensive drilling operations, and sunk a number of shafts in an attempt to locate the meteor, believing that it would contain minerals of great value. This work was carried on under the direction of a Mr. Holland, of Inspiration, Arizona; and although they penetrated to a great depth, only fragments were encountered.
The meteorites found are nickel-iron, containing about eight per cent nickel, and an appreciable amount of platinum. I was quite astonished by this array of facts; for I had no idea of the magnitude and importance of this crater, and I was ready to believe that if the meteor could be reached, it could not help but be a great boon to science, even though it might prove to be of no great commercial value. The more I thought of the scheme, the more my enthusiasm grew, till it filled my thoughts by day and my dreams by night.
I received the scientist’s invitation a week before I had planned to take my annual vacation; and as Mr. Kingston lived in my own state, in fact only a day’s drive from the old homestead, I was impatient to go to see him. I considered him one of the foremost scientists of the country and I had long hoped to persuade him to give me an account of his adventures for publication.
So upon getting home, I lost no time in going to see him. He received me at the house, but conducted me almost immediately to his little laboratory on the back of the lot, built in the side of a steep hill.
The Departure
I FOUND him a tall, light-complexioned man past middle age, of rather a studious appearance, and very pleasing manners. He has a half-humorous way of speaking of his scientific accomplishments which, while not detracting from their importance, indicates that he doesn’t take himself too seriously.
I was rather surprised to learn that his science was only an avocation, and that he was regularly employed as a designer in the offices of a brick and tile machinery manufacturer.
He plunged immediately into the details of his plans for the expedition, which included the use of a burrowing machine, and the employment of his own invention that I have mentioned above. By treating the excavated soil with Transite, he hoped to be able to reduce its magnitude and density to such an extent that it could be stored in the tunnel, thus avoiding the labor of carrying it to the surface.
He was very enthusiastic, and laid the proposition before me in such a convincing manner that I very readily agreed to make an attempt to interest such organizations and societies as we hoped might contribute funds for the expedition. We decided to go immediately to Arizona, and visit Meteor Mountain and there perfect our plans.
So two days later, we took tickets to Flagstaff, and boarded the train that was to take us to that famous crater that has been so often photographed, and about which so much has been written during the past few years, in Sunday supplements and scientific magazines.
When we arrived, we found the situation much as had been depicted in the various publications, except that there was a far greater desolation than we had imagined. We were both surprised and awed by the tremendous magnitude of the crater, and the amount of debris heaped up around it. Cold figures and mere pictures cannot give one an adequate idea of it, any more than one could gain a correct idea of Niagara Falls from books and pictures.
We were quite ready to agree with Mr. Holland, who says in the Engineering and Mining Journal Press of February 7, 1925, that more earth had been thrown out by the impact than was dug up in building the Panama Canal.
We descended into the crater and prospected around in the sand with a magnet for fragments of meteor that are said to be so numerous there. At length we found two of them, and Mr. Kingston put them in his bag to take home for analysis.
We wanted to know what kind of ground we would have to deal with, for we hoped to alter the atomic density of the predominant element in the sub-soil in such a way that it would occupy much less space than at present. Kingston said that roughly speaking, the structure of a molecule of ordinary limestone soil was made up of electrons and protons in the ratio of about nine to one. Then if one electron could be eliminated from each unit, the atomic density would be increased, and the bulk decreased accordingly. Just what the nature of this resulting material would be, he could not say without actual experiment.
So we gathered up some of the earth on the top of the dumping from the deepest of the earlier excavations, which we judged would be fairly representative of the deposits we would encounter, and prepared to transfer the scene of our labors from the wilderness to the little side-hill laboratory in our native state.
Needless to say, this part of the work devolved very largely upon Mr. Kingston; for, while my training and my work in the patent office has rendered me fairly well acquainted with chemical formulas and electro-mechanical devices, I am still far from being a finished scientist. And this business of tearing down and reconstructing the atom was to me about what differential calculus is to the South Sea Islander.
However, these little units of matter which are becoming so familiar in industrial science, and which Sir Oliver Lodge so aptly likens to miniature solar systems, held no mystery for Mr. Kingston; and he felt sure that he could prepare a suitable Transite for this particular soil. This Transite as I have said, was his own invention, for which he has taken out various patents, and which has brought him into prominence as a pioneer in this line of work.
Early one Monday morning, we carried our gripload of material into his laboratory, and commenced work. And there followed a period of intensive application, in which the nights and days were all jumbled together, until we hardly knew whether the sun was coming up or going down. As I look back, my memory is so confused with a procession of test tubes, retorts, vacuum tubes and electrical devices, that I hardly know what we did. Indeed, I didn’t know what I was doing at the time; I was just following directions, and doing as intelligently as possible what my leader instructed me to do. And from his optimistic mood and growing enthusiasm, I gathered that we were making progress.
CHAPTER II
A Discovery
AT length, after nearly a fortnight, we brought forth a brick, about an inch thick, an inch and a half wide, and three inches long, and about as heavy as zinc. We found its specific gravity to be slightly more than 7, while that of the sample of original earth of which it was composed, compressed as compactly as possible with the facilities at hand, was about 5. The breaking resistance was nearly equal to that of common soft brick.
Here, then, we had the data for determining the size of the hole we would have to dig, to secure a clear opening of any desired area. We decided that about eight feet in diameter would be as small as would be practical. Hence the entire excavation would have to be about 15 feet in diameter, leaving a lining approximately 3½ feet thick.
Having accomplished this much, we rested. It was high time, for we were both very tired; and besides, my vacation was nearly over. And as Mr. Kingston’s allotted vacation was also drawing to a close, we decided to part and divide the work of preparing for the expedition. He was to devise the exploring apparatus, and I to raise the necessary funds.
I took up my duties as examiner once more, but I had little heart for it. My mind constantly returned to what might be buried in that mountain. I suspect that Mr. Kingston’s work also suffered from lack of enthusiasm; for every week-end he wrote me of his progress in designing the tunnelling machine.
About three weeks after my return, I received a short, apparently hastily written note from him saying: “I am convinced that our meteor is an asteroid, as I have just found unmistakable fragments of fertile top-soil in the samples we brought from the mouth of the shaft.”
I was very much surprised at this information, and as I recalled the barren, desert-like aspect of that arid district, I felt sure that if there was surface soil of any
marked degree of fertility, it must have come from the falling body. But as to the nature of asteroids, I freely admit I was a bit hazy. The astronomy of my college days is buried under a twenty-year deposit of rust. So I went again to the research library, and asked the librarian for some authority on asteroids. She brought me C.G. Abbot’s recent book, “The Earth and the Stars”. (Mr. Abbot is assistant secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.) I will quote a few lines from his chapter on asteroids.
He says, in part: “Between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter lies a large gap of space, in which, according to Bode’s law, should be a planet 2.8 times as far from the sun as our earth. Beginning about the year 1800, astronomers have been filling this gap with little planets, none of them nearly as big as our moon, and ranging from a diameter of 500 miles down to, comparatively speaking, mere rocks of but a few miles in size. In all, nearly a thousand have already been found, and it seems probable that if we could detect every one, however small, the number would be almost countless.
“Nowadays they are discovered by photography.
“Some of these bodies are variable in their light, which means that one side is reflecting more than the other. This gives a chance to measure the time of rotation for a few of them. Eros sometimes comes within 15,000,000 miles of the earth, much nearer even than Venus. Such occasions offer the most favorable opportunities for determining the scale of the whole solar system, including the earth’s distance from the sun. Unfortunately, the most favorable one occurred in 1883-4, when Eros had not been discovered. In 1900-1, the opportunity was fairly favorable. Another favorable occasion will come in 1931.
“The late Professor Watson discovered a good many minor planets. He felt such a fatherly interest in them that he made a provision in his will for a trust fund, called the Watson fund, in the custody of the National Academy of Science, to be devoted to the ‘promotion of knowledge of the Watson Planets and closely allied subjects.’ ”
It seemed to me quite reasonable to suppose that one of these little worlds which at times come so near the earth, might have deviated from its orbit, and been caught by the earth’s attraction. In that case, no wonder there was rather a large hole at Canyon Diablo.
The probability of an asteroid apparently stimulated my co-worker to greater effort, for before the first snow he had his drawings all complete, and an application for patent filed on the tunnelling machine.
Then it was my turn to get busy. I prepared a list of all the organizations that I thought might be interested in this kind of research work, and then prepared and committed to memory a sales talk that I thought would present the proposition in the most alluring light.
This carefully prepared sales talk, however, proved to be practically a dead loss; for I never had occasion to use more than fragments of it. Either those I interviewed were in too great a hurry, or plied me with too many questions; or at the critical moment I couldn’t call it to mind. It did, however, give me a feeling for preparedness, so that by the first of the year I was ready to tackle the entrenched forces of finance.
During my week ends, I visited the offices of the Geographical Society, (the publishers of the Geographic Magazine), the Rockefeller Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Museum, the U.S. Geodetic Survey, the Bureau of Mines, the National Academy of Science, and many other public and semi-public institutions, such as colleges and scientific societies. I met with varying degrees of success; and by the middle of March I was able to report to Mr. Kingston that I had promise of sufficient funds to warrant the construction of the machine, and the buying of such other equipment as we would need to start the expedition.
One offer from the government was especially gratifying. We were assured of a practically unlimited supply of electricity generated as a byproduct at a large reclamation project on the other side of the mountain. This was a great boon, as there could be no doubt that it would require a tremendous amount of power to drive our heavy machinery, and provide current for the Transit e, and if the work should consume a long time, the cost would soon become prohibitive.
By this time our project had attained some publicity; and the McCrea Brick and Tile Machinery Company, Mr. Kingston’s employers, generously offered to build our machine at cost. Mr. Kingston, therefore, left the designing room in order to personally superintend the construction, while I got a few days off to make a flying trip to the mountains to help lay out the route of the high tension line that was to furnish our power.
Early in the spring, I made application to the patent bureau to extend my annual vacation to a three months’ leave of absence. This of course entailed a great deal of red tape, for what does the Civil Service care for lost worlds? At length all difficulties were adjusted and on the tenth of July, Mr. Kingston and I set out from the factory with our machinery and equipment on some half dozen freight cars, billed to the station nearest to our now famous crater.
The Meteor Mole
ARRIVED at the unloading station, we commenced the herculean task of transporting this heavy freight over two townships, both of which were practically turned up on edge. With a small army of men, oxen and mules, we made the portage by main strength and sheer force of numbers; and then commenced the task of assembling the machine and storing our supplies. For three mortal weeks we were busy doing necessary nothings; and then the machine on which we had staked our hopes began to take shape. Mr. Kingston called it the meteor mole, and a veritable mole it proved to be.
I will here attempt to give a very sketchy description of the mole, endeavoring to avoid all technical terms, because in this matter of technical description I might easily go to extremes; since in my work in the patent office I have to deal almost entirely in technical terms, until they have become a part of my every-day life.
I hope that this report will be of interest to, and will be read by, a great many more people who have never had any mechanical training. In fact, our researches have already progressed so far that it is evident that their historic, geological and biological importance far outweighs that of any mere mechanical contrivance. But since it was, so to speak, the vehicle of our progress, the mole is manifestly worthy of some attention.
The body of the machine resembled the housing of a much elongated dynamo; as though the sides were pulled apart, stretching it out into a long cylindrical form, perhaps twenty feet long, and a little less than eight feet in diameter. On the front end, and extending forward and to the sides, was the excavating and molding machinery. The forward half of the cylinder contained the motors and controls, etc., and the rear was fitted up as a combination living quarters, machine shop and laboratory. Here was to be our home while the mole was at work.
The machine was so designed that most of its operations were controlled automatically. There was no traction machinery, only a vibrator which was contrived to jar the machine enough to cause it to slide down to the bottom of its own excavation, if the steepness of the grade of our descent was not sufficient to overcome the friction of our contact.
When the machine was in operation, the excavating unit was of course in the foreground, cutting in the form of a semi-circle, with a vertical diameter; while the excavator was on, say, the left side of an excavation, the machine was held stationary by a huge prop extending from the right side of the machine and bearing against the face of the wall at the end of the tunnel. This prop resembled an elephant’s leg with a very much distended foot. Mr. Kingston dubbed it “Pes pachydermis.” While the excavator was at work, the leg remained stationary; but when the semi-circle was dug to the depth of about a yard and a half, and could reach no more soil to offer resistance, a pressure-governed control automatically withdrew the right leg and extended the left one, and at the same time transferred the excavator to the opposite side, where it again came in contact with the soil and started to do its stuff.
The excavated soil was transferred to a crusher, where it was thoroughly pulverized and passed on to a treating vat, where it was treated with the powerful electri
c current that was being conducted through the all-important Transit e. From here, the transformed soil, much reduced in bulk, passed on to the mold, which pressed it into huge blocks, shaped like the building stones used in constructing arches. These were automatically deposited against the inner circumference of the circular excavation, in a spiral formation; where each row was held in position by a chemical until supported by a succeeding row.
Thus, the wall of our tunnel was supported by an arch and an inverted arch, or rather a circular arch construction. Theoretically, at least, the only human attention the machine required was the renewing of the charge of Transite as it became exhausted. This charge, like that of a storage battery, was rather short-lived.
So it was that one day in early August, all was in readiness, as Mr. Kingston so tersely put it, to turn on the juice. I had been busy for the most part with the construction of the supply camp and in storing the Transite in carefully insulated sheds; while my co-worker with a gang of mechanics had been assembling the mole; so I had paid but little attention to its appearance for a few days.
It was situated a few rods from the camp; and, on the morning I speak of, there was a very heavy fog on the mountain. As I approached it, it suddenly loomed up out of the mist, and I have a very vivid impression of it, with its rear propped up on some huge logs at an angle of about 70 degrees. It appeared poised for a high dive into the bowels of the earth.