TWENTY YEARS' PROGEESS IN EXPLOSIVES.'' 



[With 9 plates.] 



By Oscar Guttmann, M. Inst. C. E., F. I. C, F. C. S. 



From the time of the invention of gunpowder, or approximately in 

 the year 1250 (Roger Bacon at any rate knew of it in 1264), until the 

 beginning of the nineteenth century no other explosive was introduced 

 into practice, although picric acid and fulminate of mercury were 

 known about the latter date. Experiments were carried out by Le 

 Blond in 1756 in the French Government factory at Essonne to pro- 

 duce gunpowder without sulphur, and a British patent for a powder 

 containing "coal brasses" and without charcoal was taken out by De- 

 laval in 1766,^ but that was all. In 1788 Berthollet and Lavoisier tried 

 the effect of adding potassium chlorate, and in 1861 Designolle made a 

 jDowder from potassium picrate and saltpeter, but without much suc- 

 cess. In 1846 Schoenbein invented gun cotton, and Sobrero in 1847 

 nitroglycerin, but the Austrian Government, which was the only one 

 to try gun cotton in guns, stopped the experiments abruptly in 1867, 

 their magazines at Hirtenberg having blown up, and, curiously 

 enough, it is not until that date that Nobel began to Avork on dyna- 

 mite. About the same time the British Government began to experi- 

 ment with g:un cotton at the point where the Austrians had left off, 

 and introduced it as a blasting agent into the service, their example 

 being then followed by other governments. In 1873 Sprengel made 

 his well-known communication to the chemical society " on a new 

 class of explosives," which has since been named after him; and in 

 1878 it was again Nobel who invented blasting gelatine. xVbout 1864 

 Abel and Doctor Kellner, of Woolwich Arsenal, made a granular gun- 

 powder from gun cotton, and at the same time a sporting powder 



"• Reprinted, by permission, with abridgment by the author, from Journal of 

 the Royal Society of Arts, London, Nos. 2927, 2928, 2929, Vol. LVII, December 25, 

 1908, January 1 and 8, 1909, and from volume " The Manufacture of Explosives. 

 Twenty Years' Progress." Whittaker & Co., London and New York, 1909. 



» Thomas Delaval, British patent No. 846, of 1766. 



88292— SM 1908 18 263 



