18 Sir Frederick Ahel [Jan. 31, 



The attention thus dinicted in France to the properties of picric acid 

 appears to have given rise to experiments resulting in its employment 

 as an ingredient of the first smokeless powder {Foudre B) adopted 

 for the French magazine rifle. 



The idea of employing picric acid preparations as explosive agents 

 for propulsive purposes originated with Designolle about twenty 

 years ago, but no useful results attended the experiments with the 

 particular mixtures proposed by him. It is certain that the recent 

 adaptation of that substance in France was of a different character, 

 and that, promising as were the results of the new smokeless powder, 

 of which it appears to have formed an ingredient, and a counterpart 

 of which was made the subject of experiments at Woolwich about 

 three years ago, its deficiency in the all-essential quality of stability 

 must have been, at any rate, one cause of its abandonment in favour of 

 another form of smokeless powder, which there is reason to believe is 

 of more simple character. 



In Germany, the subject of smokeless powder for small arms and 

 artillery was being steadily pursued in secret, while the sensational 

 reports concerning Pottdre B were spread about in France, and a 

 small-arm powder giving excellent results in regard to ballistic 

 properties and uniformity, was elaborated at the Rottweil powder- 

 works, and appears to have been adopted into the German service for 

 a time, but its first great promise of success seems to have failed of 

 fulfilment through defects in stability. 



Reference has already been made to the conversion of gun-cotton 

 (trinitrocellulose), and to mixtures of it with less explosive forms of 

 nitrated cotton (or cellulose of other description), by the action of 

 solvents, into horn-like materials. These are in the first instance 

 obtained in the form of gelatinous masses, which, prior to the complete 

 evaporation, or removal in other ways, of the solvent, can be pressed or 

 squirted into wires, rods, or tubes, or rolled or spread into sheets ; 

 when they have become hardened, they may be cut up into tablets, or 

 into strips or pieces of size suitable for conversion into charges or 

 cartridges. Numerous patents have been secured for the treatment of 

 gun-cotton, nitro-cotton, or mixtures of these with other substances, by 

 the methods indicated ; but in this direction the German makers of the 

 powder just now referred to seem to have secured priority. Experi- 

 ments were made about a year and a half ago with powder produced 

 in this way at Woolwich, and the Wetteren Powder Company in 

 Belgium has also manufactured so-called paper powders, or horn-like 

 preparations, of the same kind, which were brought forward as 

 counterparts of the French small arm- and artillery-smokeless powder. 

 Mr. Alfred Nobel, to whom the mining world is so largely 

 indebted for the invention of dynamite, and of other very efficient blast- 

 in^ agents of which nitro-glycerine is the basis, was the first to apply 

 the latter explosive agent, in conjunction with one of the lower pro- 

 ducts of nitration of cellulose, to the production of a smokeless powder. 

 This powder bears great resemblance to one of the most interesting of 



