^56] 



NITRO-GLYCERINE : 



ITS HISTORY, MANUFACTURE, AND INDUSTRIAL APPLICATION. 



BY W. H. ELLIS, M. A., M. B., 



Lecturer on Chemistry at Trinity College, Toronto. 



The discovery of nitro-glycerine dates from the year 1847. On the 

 15th of February of that year, a letter was read before the French' 

 Academy from M. Ascagne Sobrero,* in which he stated that he 

 had obtained from glycerine a substitution product analogous to gun 

 cotton. By adding glycerine to a mixture of two volumes of sul- 

 phuric acid with one volume of nitric acid, kept carefully cool, and 

 pouring the resulting mixture into water, he obtained a pale yellow 

 heavy oily body, insoluble in water, but sohible in alcohol and ether, 

 of a pungent and aromatic taste, but without smell. Although 

 Sobrero must have been acquainted with the explosive properties of 

 the new compound, no allusion is made to them in this communi- 

 cation, but he states that as much as can be taken up by dipping 

 lightly in it the point of the little finger will, if placed on the tongue, 

 produce severe headache for several hours. 



M. Sobrero announced his intention of making an analysis of the 

 compound, but he does not appear to have done so, and it was not 

 till 1854 that its composition was accurately determined. In that year 

 Mr. Railtonf succeeded in effecting the combustion of nitro-glycerine 

 with copper oxide and metallic copper. He found that caustic potash 

 absorbed two-thirds of the volume of the gas that was evolved, and 

 hence he concluded that the ratio of carbonic acid to nitrogen in 

 the products of combustion was 2 volumes to 1 volume, which would • 

 correspond to one moleclue of C O2 and one atom of N, and since a 

 molecule of C Oa' contains one atom of C, it follows that nitro-glycerine 

 contains an equal number of atoms of C and 'N, and since a molecule 

 of nitro-glycerine contains 3 atoms of 0, a molecule of nitro-glycerine 



* Comptes Bend., 15th February, ISfT. 

 t Q. J. Chem. Soc, 30th March, 1854. 



