June 9, 1905.] 



SCIENCE. 



879 



in charge of the ordnance bureau of the 

 Confederate states, serving with the rank 

 of colonel. He has described his experi- 

 ence under the title 'Applied Chemistry in 

 the South during the Civil War,'* which 

 he has delivered as a lecture before various 

 chemical societies. 



A history of the manufacture of explo- 

 sives in this country would carry us far 

 into the past, for the oldest of the still 

 existing powder mills was established in 

 1802 by Eleuthere Irene Du Pont and the 

 name of Du Pont is still honorably asso- 

 ciated with the industry, for so recently as 

 1893 two of that name received a patent 

 for a smokeless powder which is now 

 largely made at works near Wilmington, 

 Del. 



During the years 1862-4 Robert Ogden 

 Doremus (1824- ) developed the u'^e of 

 compressed granulated gunpowder, which 

 was adopted by the French government. 

 It was concerning this inventor that Sir 

 Frederick A. Abel in 1890 in his retiring 

 address before the British Association said 

 that Doremus 'had proposed the employ- 

 ment in heavy guns of charges consisting 

 of large pellets in prismatic form. ' Charles 

 Edward Munroe (1848- ) must be i-ec- 

 ognized as the first in the world to prepare 

 a 'smokeless powder that consisted of a 

 single substance in a state of chemical 

 purity.' This explosive, which he invented 

 while chemist at the U. S. Torpedo Station, 

 Rhode Island, and which became known as 

 the 'naval smokeless powder,' was referred 

 to by Secretary of War Tracy in 1892 as 

 presenting 'results considerably in advance 

 of those hitherto obtained in foreign coun- 

 tries. 'f 



* An abstract of this paper with the title ' In- 

 dustrial Chemistry in the South during the Civil 

 War ' is contained in the Scientific American for 

 July 25, 1903. 



t The history of the ' Development of Smoke- 

 less Powders ' was the subject of Dr. Munroe's 

 presidential address before the Washington Sec- 



Of later development is the Bernadou 

 powder invented by John Baptiste Berna- 

 dou (1858- ), of the U. S. Navy, and 

 which it is claimed has been adopted for 

 use in the naval branch of the service. 



No contribution to the history of tech- 

 nical chemistry in the United States would 

 be complete without some reference to the 

 development of coal oil and petroleum. It 

 seems almost impossible to realize that 

 scarcely half a century ago the only use 

 of petroleum was as a cure for rheumatism 

 under the name of Seneca oil. The com- 

 mercial exploitation of this important 

 illuminant is, of course, largely due to the 

 Standard Oil Company and to the expert 

 chemists in their employ credit should be 

 given for the production of the many 

 beautiful by-products that are now made. 

 A full description of these with proper 

 reference to the chemist to whom we are 

 indebted for them would, indeed, be valu- 

 able, but even for a simple enumeration 

 of the products in tabular form giving 

 their immediate origin I must refer you to 

 the text-books on industrial chemistry.* 



One of the most interesting of these 

 many compounds is vaseline, whose use in 

 pharmacy is so prevalent. It was invented 

 in 1870 by Robert Augustus Chesborough 

 (1837- ). Charles Frederick Mabery 

 (1850- ) has been an indefatigable 

 worker in the theoretical branch of the 

 subject, especiallj' on the composition of 

 petroleum, in the study of which he has 

 been aided with grants from the C. M. 

 AVarren Fund for Chemical Research of 

 the American Academy of Arts and Sci- 

 ences. Stephen Farnam Peckham (1839- 



) has been a prolific contributor to the 

 literature of the technology of the subject, 



tion of the American Chemical Society in 1896. 

 See Journal of the American Chemical Society, 

 XVIII., 1896, p. 819. 



* See ' A Handbook of Industrial Chemistry,' by 

 Samuel P. Sadtler (Philadelphia, 1900), p. 21. 



