EXPLOSIVES 377 



sulphur 15-5 parts per cent. This departure from the type, 

 which has been established by modern scientific methods of 

 manufacture, is interesting when the tradition is recalled which 

 attributed the invention of gunpowder to the Chinese. 1 



Changes in the guns then demanded changes in the rate of 

 combustion of the powder used in them, while the conditions of 

 modern warfare required a propellant which should be practically 

 smokeless. It seemed useless to construct quick-firing guns and 

 machine guns capable of delivering a shower of bullets if after 

 the first discharge or two all view of the enemy in front of the 

 guns became impossible. Gun-cotton, which is the essential 

 basis of all modern propellants, differs from the old powder in 

 yielding only gaseous products in its explosion, without any 

 solid and hence without smoke. There is also an important 

 difference between the two, in the fact that the old powder is 

 merely a mechanical mixture of solid ingredients, the particles 

 of which, under a microscope, can be seen lying side by side 

 but quite distinct from one another, while gun-cotton is a 

 chemical compound. In the former, therefore, the oxygen 

 required to combine with the sulphur and with the carbon of the 

 charcoal has to be liberated first from the particles of the nitrate 

 and then to attack separately the particles of the combustible 

 sulphur and carbon. 



In gun-cotton and similar substances, each molecule of the 

 compound contains within itself the elements which are to 

 combine together to form the gaseous products of the explosion. 



This will be understood by reference to the equation given 

 below. 



Cotton consists of the hairs from the seed of the cotton plant 

 (Gossypium herbaceum and other species, N.O. Malvacece). 

 When looked at with a microscope they are seen to consist of 

 long flattened twisted tubes of translucent substance. This 



1 The invention of gunpowder is by the English attributed to Roger Bacon, 

 who was born in 1214 Others suppose a certain monk, of whom nothing 

 positive is known, but who is supposed to have lived in the early part of the 

 fourteenth century, to have been the inventor. He is commonly spoken of as 

 Berthold Schwarz, a purely imaginary name. 



Gunpowder and cannon were known to have been used in England in 1344, 

 in France in 1338, and the Oxford MS. "De officiis regum," dated 1325, gives 

 an illustration of a gun. The invention of gunpowder must therefore be placed 

 at an earlier date. 



Those who are interested in the history of the subject should consult Monu- 

 menta Pulveris Pyrii, by the late Oscar Guttmann, 1906. 



