History
While drilling and blasting saw limited use in pre-industrial times using gunpowder (such as with the Blue Ridge Tunnel in the United States, built in the 1850s), it was not until more powerful (and safer) explosives, such as dynamite (patented 1867), as well as powered drills were developed, that its potential was fully realised.
Drilling and blasting was successfully used to construct tunnels throughout the world, notably the Fréjus Rail Tunnel, the St. Gotthard Tunnel, the Simplon Tunnel, the Jungfraubahn and even the longest road tunnel in the world, Lærdalstunnelen, are constructed using this method.
Read more about this topic: Drilling And Blasting
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“Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of men’s opposition to women’s emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“Every literary critic believes he will outwit history and have the last word.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)