THE NITROGEN QUESTION FROM THE MILITARY 
STANDPOINT-¢ 
By CHARLES EK. MUNROE, 
Professor of Chemistry, The George Washington University. 
The invention of gunpowder afforded man a means of utilizing 
the energy of chemical separation in effecting propulsion and of 
more efficiently applying this form of energy in mining and quarry- 
ing. Through the discovery or invention of mercuric fulminate, 
the cellulose nitrates, the glyceryl nitrates, the nitro-substitution 
compounds, and the various explosive compositions made from these 
nitrates and nitro-compounds, man was enabled also to utilize the 
energy stored up in unstable molecules. History indicates that the 
invention of gunpowder was made where saltpeter, which is its chief 
ingredient, was naturally most abundant and most easily obtained, 
but that, owing to the great value of gunpowder to man, its use and 
manufacture spread to the cooler and more humid countries, and 
it is in these countries that it and the other explosives enumerated 
have come to be most extensively used. Statistics are not at hand 
by which to show the increase in the use of powder throughout the 
world, but some relative idea of this growth in recent years may be 
gained from Table 1, which sets forth the quantity, or value, or 
both, of the gunpowder, including, since 1860, blasting powder also, 
produced in the United States in each census year beginning with 
1840. . 
The statistics for the world’s production of the modern explosives 
are also not accessible, but an item contributing toward the assem- 
bling of this valuable information regarding the world’s progress 
was given for dynamite as’sold from the several factories with which 
Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, was associated, though as 
there were, during the period covered, independent factories in 
Germany, in America, and probably in other countries, these figures, 
as set forth in Table 2, give only a relative idea of the growth of 
this industry. 
4Reprinted by permission from United States Naval Institute Proceedings, 
vol. 35, No. 3. Copyright, 1909, by Philip R. Alger, secretary and treasurer, 
United States Naval Institute. 
225 
