2-979-044 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Holyhead Harbour Works - View of the Face of the Mountain after the Grand Blasting Operations, Jan. 16, 1857: the Quantity of Quartz Rock Displaced 120,000 Tons, by a Charge of 16,000 Pounds of Gunpowder, 1857. 'The operation and engineering arrangements were under the personal direction of Mr. Charles Rigby, assisted by Mr. Reitheimer, the resident engineer of the firm. All present were much gratified and astonished by the effects produced with such certainty by the powerful agency of gunpowder and the voltaic battery...[The] battery was placed a short distance from the quarries, and the spectators were within a protected...observatory in front of the mountain, at a distance of only 600 yards, from which they were enabled to witness the explosion without danger, not a stone having been propelled 100 yards from the face of the quarry'. From "Illustrated London News", 1857.