104 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



spoakinof, "tri-nitro-cellulose," or cellulose which has had three 

 atoms of its hyrlroofen rc^placed by hyi)oiiitric acid. All kinds of 

 wood consist chiefly of cellulose ; the cellulose of wood, however, is 

 unlike that of cotton fibre, which is quite pure, being always com- 

 bined with more or less coloring matter, resin, and various eartliy 

 and other substances. It is obvious, therefore, that if we could 

 remove from wood all the substances otlier than cellulose which 

 enter into its comiJosition, and were to subject the pure cellulose 

 then remaining to the same chemical treatment that cotton fibre 

 has to imdergo in order to l)e converted into gun-cotton, we should 

 obtain a sulistance of absolutely the same composition as gun- 

 cotton, and diftering from it onh- in form. This is just what Capt. 

 Schultze does, with the result that he gets " tri-nitro-cellulose," 

 not in delicate filaments like gun-cotton, exploding almost instan- 

 taneously, but in hai'd, compact grains, of any desired size, and at 

 least as slow of combustion as the densest gunpowder of the same 

 size of grain. While gun-cotton, being, at least for gunnery pur- 

 poses, only three times as powerful as its weight of gunpowder, 

 costs, weight for weight, six times as much as gunpowder costs, and 

 can only lie used safelj- by means of special methods, this new pro- 

 duct, wliile nearly foiu* times as powerful as gunpowder, costs, 

 weight for weight, considerably less than gunpowder, and can be 

 used in preciselj' the same way, the onl}' precaution necessary being 

 to use of the new powder only one-fourth as much as of the old. 



Any hard wood is cut into sheets about one-sixteenth of an inch 

 thick, and punched into little cylinders, which constitute eventually 

 the grains of the powder, which is thus granulated at the begin- 

 ninginstead of attheend of the process of manufacture. To remove 

 all constituents except cellulose, these gi-anular cylinders are boiled 

 for about eight hours in strong solutions of carbonate of soda, 

 frequently changed ; after twenty-four hours washing in running 

 water, they are next steeped for two or three hours in a chlori- 

 nated solution ; after a second twenty-four hours' Avashing in cold 

 running water, they are submitted for six hours to the action of a 

 mixture of forty parts, by weight, of concentrated nitric acid with a 

 hundred parts, by weight, of concentrated sul^jhuricacid, one part 

 of the grains, by weight, being placed with seventeen parts by 

 weight of the mixed acids in an iron vessel, which should be kept 

 cool. The grains then being carefully drained, they are exposed 

 to cool running water for two or three days, then boiled in a weak 

 solution of carbonate of soda, again exposed for twenty-four hours 

 to running water, and carefully di'ied. Up to this point the gi'ains 

 are not explosive. The dried grains are now steejoed for ten 

 minutes in a solution of some salt or salts containing oxygen and 

 nitrogen — the best appears to be for every hundred j^arts by weight 

 of the grains, two hundi'ed and twenty parts of water, having dis- 

 solved in it twenty-seven and one-half parts of nitrate of potash 

 and seven and one-half parts of nitrate of barytes, at a tempera- 

 ture of 112° Fahr. After draining, they are dried in a chamber 

 at 90° to 112° Fahr. for about eighteen hours. 



This new powder will be of use not only for small arms and 

 artillery, but for mining and engineering pm-poses; its great 



