Shooting Through Stone

The "bullets" it fires are so small and so light that they can be deflected by a single molecule of air. Even so, the new electron gun devised by Westinghouse Physicist Berthold Schumacher packs so much power that it can shoot its way through the world's hardest rock. It points the way for cheap and relatively simple tools for quarrying stone, mining minerals or even carving tunnels through mountains.

Schumacher obtains his electron projectiles by boiling them off a heated metal cathode. High-power electrical fields focus them into a narrow beam and boost them up to tremendous speeds -- in much the same manner as electron beams are generated inside a TV picture tube. But Schumacher's gun has a special capability: its electron beam maintains its focus and power for a short distance after it squirts out of the gun barrel and into the atmosphere. In earlier experimental cutters the beam lost its power almost immediately in collisions with air molecules; the target material had to be placed inside a vacuum chamber along with the rest of the gun's components. And since the chamber's size was always limited, so was the size of the job it could handle.

Schumacher aims his electrons through a series of chambers from which pumps are continuously evacuating the air. By simply blowing a steady stream of inert gas past the final hole--the muzzle of the gun -- he stops dirt and debris from being sucked back into the vacuum. No wider than a sixteenth of an inch, the electron beam, says Schumacher, can cut iron bars, granite blocks or slabs of concrete. Only requirement is that the gun be kept virtually on top of its target. From a half inch out, it can burrow up to four inches into the toughest stone in less than a minute. It also works underwater, has no recoil, and does its job in uncanny quiet. With his 9-kw. laboratory model for a prototype, says Schumacher, he could easily build a 100-kw. version capable of cutting a wide electronic swath for a variety of industries.

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