Nitro-Glycerine Explosives. 9^ 



of these tins. In America an ingenious scheme was ailopted to get 

 •over some of these difficulties, viz.. the transitort of the nitro- 

 glycerine in frozen blocks — for at about i 2°C. it freezes into a solid 

 mass, which can hardly be distinguished from ice. However, as 

 several of you who are sitting here know well, frozen nitroglycerine 

 is not one of the most pleasant things in the explosive line to 

 handle, and this expedient had likewise to be abandoned. I under- 

 stand that until quite recently nitroglycerine as such was used 

 rather extensively in railway work in America, and il was quite 

 common for the men who were skilled in hand making nitro- 

 glycerine to follow up a contractor, making the nitro-glycerine as he 

 went along, and natural I\ it was consumed on the premises, the 

 waste acids being simpl\ thrown awa\. .Xow.adays, we have to be 

 a little more economical. 



One would have thought that the experiences just related would 

 have been sufficient to daunt the most intrepid, but Xobel never 

 really abandoned his experiments. One of the expedients which 

 he tried to make nitro-glvcerine safe for transport met with a fair 

 amount of success at the time, but it in turn had to be abandoned. 

 It was to mix the nitro-glvcerine with methyl alcohol, and transport 

 it as a mixture. When it was required for u.se the methvl alcohol 

 was simply washed out by water. 



Time does not permit of my following Xol)el through all his 

 • experiment.s. suffice it to sa\ that his attenti(jn was next directed 

 to finding some porous bod\ in which the nitro-glycerine might be 

 absorbed. After hundreds of experiments, he finally fixed on 

 Kieselguhr. and in the \ ear 1867 this explosive was intrcjduced 

 under the name of Dynamite, which name it bears to this day. 



Although many peo])]e tried to circumvent this invention by the 

 use of other absorbents, no one has ever succeeded in improving on 

 the Dynamite of 1867. which is identical with the Dvnamite of 

 1903. I do not u.se the name in its general sense, as we all do in 

 South Africa, but as the name of a certain explosive. This discovery 

 marked, perhaps, the most important i)oint in the development of 

 uiitro-glycerine explosives. 



About this same time an English chemist, attached to the War 

 Office, had been experimenting with fulminate of mercurx. with 

 the object of finding out whether a cap could not be devLsed for 

 setting off explosives in much the same way as caps had been u.sed 

 up to that time for the muzzle-loading guns, the onlv kind then in 

 use. Fulminate itself was actually discovered in 1799. and the 

 first caps were made by an English gunmaker 16 vears later. The 

 only explosive used until the discovery of nitro-glvcerine. and .subse- 

 quently of Dynamite, was the well-known Black Powder, which was 

 then, and is still, ignited l)y means of the ordinary fuse, which everv 

 one knows so well. This fuse, however, was not so suitable for the 

 newer kind of explosives, but the chemist referred to just now was 

 successful in devising what was nothing more nor less than a large 

 cap, which when used in conjunction with the ordinarv fuse im- 

 rparted quite a different effect to Dynamite, so that it (the D\ namite) 



