The Chemistry of Powder and Explosives - Sciencemadness Dot Org

EARLY HISTORY OF COLLOIDED POWDERS 293
, . , This substitution has had the foreseen consequence of
suppressing- the smoke from the shooting. 4
The author of the note in the Memorial des poudres in which the
above-quoted public announcement was made concerning the new
powder was so impressed by the importance of the invention that
he concludes the note by saying:
It results from this that the adaptation to firearms of any
other explosive known at the present time would be able to
bring to the armament only a perfectioning of detail, and
that a new progress, comparable to that which has been
realized recently, cannot be made except by the discovery
of explosives of a type entirely different from those which
chemistry today puts at our disposition,
French powder for the military rifle consists of small square
flakes lightly glazed with graphite. The glazing serves to retard
slightly the rate of burning of the surface layer, and. more important,
it serves to make the powder electrically conducting and to
prevent the accumulation of a static charge during the blending
of small lots of the powder into a single, ballistically uniform
large lot. For guns the powder consists of unglazed strips. The
squares and strips, ignited over their entire surfaces, burn for
lengths of time which depend upon their thicknesses, and they
retain, during the burning, surfaces which change but little in
area until at the end the grains are completely consumed.
1888. The second successful dense smokeless powder was the
ballistite which was invented by Alfred Nobel. 5 This was a stiff
gelatinous mixture of nitroglycerin and soluble nitrocellulose in
proportions varying between 1 to 2 and 2 to 1, prepared with
the use of a solvent which was later removed and recovered.
Nobel appears to have been led to the invention by thinking
about celluloid, for the patent specification states that the substitution
of almost all the camphor in celluloid by nitroglycerin
yields a material which is suitable for use as a propellant. In the
method of manufacture first proposed, camphor was dissolved in
nitroglycerin, benzene was added, and then dry, pulped, soluble
nitrocellulose; the mixture was kneaded, the benzene was allowed
to evaporate, and the material was rolled between warm rollers
*Mem. poudres, 3, 11-12 (1890).
5 Brit. Pat. 1471 (1888).