JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
Shells as far as the eye can see, at the National Filling factory at Chilwell, Nottinghamshire. Even though I enjoy calculating estimates at vast quantities of things (like all of the life that has existed on Earth, from multi-cellular onwards, how many Legos it would take to build a Dyson sphere around our Solar System, what distance the Enterprise has covered under the command of Capt Picard, that sort) I really can't get a comfortable picture of the vastness of this factory to estimate the number of pounds of explosives under that roof.
Given that the factory produced about 19 million shells during WWI, I think it would be a safe guess that some 1 billion pounds of explosives were processed through the factory--and perhaps several billion. But it is difficult to say what we are looking at in these photos, except to say that the number is "big".
[Source" John Hughes-Wilson, The First World War in 100 Objects, Firefly Books, 2014.
["Female munitions workers guide 6 inch howitzer shells being lowered to the floor at the Chilwell ammunition factory in Nottinghamshire, U.K."--Source: "British official photographer : Nicholls, Horace - This is photograph Q 30040 from the collections of the Imperial War Museums."]
[Source: http://www.iwmprints.org.uk/image/1100193/milner-e-the-interior-of-the-filled-shell-store-at-the-national-shell-filling-factory-at-chilwell-nottinghamshire-15-may-1917]
[Source: http://www.iwmprints.org.uk/image/1100192/milner-e-shells-awaiting-filling-with-explosives-in-a-store-of-the-national-shell-filling-factory-at-chilwell-nottinghamshire-21-november-1916]
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