SHORT PAPERS 707 



federate States, serving with the rank of colonel. He has described his experience 

 under the title Applied Chemistry in the South during the Civil War, 1 which he 

 has delivered as a lecture before various chemical societies. 



A history of the manufacture of explosives in this country would carry us far 

 into the past, for the oldest of the still existing powder-mills was established in 

 1802 by Eleuthere Irene Du Pont and the name of Du Pont is still honorably 

 associated with the industry, for so recently as 1893 two of that name received 

 a patent for a smokeless powder which is now largely made at works near Wil- 

 mington, Delaware. 



During the years 1862-64, Robert Ogden Doremus (1824-1906) developed the use 

 of compressed granulated gunpowder, which was adopted by the French Govern- 

 ment. It was concerning this inventor that Sir Frederick A. Abel in 1890, in his 

 retiring address before the British Association, said that Doremus " had proposed 

 the employment in heavy guns of charges consisting of large pellets in prismatic 

 form." Charles Edward Munroe (1848- ) must be recognized as the first in the 

 world to prepare ' ' a smokeless powder that consisted of a single substance in 

 a state of chemical purity." This explosive, which he invented while chemist at 

 the United States Torpedo Station, Rhode Island, and which became known as 

 the " naval smokeless powder," was referred to by Secretary of War Tracy, in 

 1892, as presenting "results considerably in advance of those hitherto obtained 

 in foreign countries." 2 



Of later development is the Bernadou powder invented by John Baptiste Ber- 

 nadou (1858- ), of the United States Navy, and which it is claimed has been 

 adopted for use in the naval branch of the service. 



No contribution to the history of technical chemistry in the United States 

 would be complete without some reference to the development of coal-oil and 

 petroleum. It seems almost impossible to realize that scarcely half a century ago 

 the only use of petroleum was as a cure for rheumatism under the name of Seneca 

 oil. The commercial exploitation of this important illuminant is, of course, largely 

 due to the Standard Oil Company, and to the expert chemists in their employ 

 credit should be given for the production of the many beautiful by-products that 

 are now made. A full description of these, with proper reference to the chemist to 

 whom we are indebted for them, would, indeed, be valuable, but even for a simple 

 enumeration of the products in tabular form giving their immediate origin I must 

 refer you to the text-books on industrial chemistry. 3 



One of the most interesting of these many compounds is vaseline, whose use in 

 pharmacy is so prevalent. It was invented in 1870 by Robert Augustus Ches- 

 borough (1837- ). Charles Frederick Mabery (1850- ) has been an indefatig- 

 able worker in the theoretical branch of the subject, especially on the composi- 

 tion of petroleum, in the study of which he has been aided with grants from the 

 C. M. Warren Fund for Chemical Research of the American Academy of Arts and 

 Sciences. Stephen Farnam Peckham (1839- ) has been a prolific contributor to 

 the literature of the technology of the subject, and his report on petroleum, 

 prepared for the Tenth Census (Washington, 1880), is standard authority. Another 

 chemist who has studied petroleum both in the laboratory and from a commer- 

 cial point of view as well is Samuel Philip Sadtler (1847- ). His Industrial 



1 An abstract of this paper, with the title Industrial Chemistry in the South 

 during the Civil War, is contained in the Scientific American for July 25, 1903. 



1 The history of the Development of Smokeless Powders was the subject of Dr. 

 Munroe's presidential address before the Washington Section of the American 

 Chemical Society in 1896. See Journal of the American Chemical Society, vol. 

 xvm, p. 819, 1896. 



3 See A Handbook of Industrial Chemistry, bv Samuel P. Sadtler (Philadelphia, 

 1900), p. 21. 



