The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1899-04-19
SOME smokELEss POWDERS.
Important Differences in Their Com
position.
From The New York Tribune.

combustion OF SmokeleSS powder stored
with black powder, has raised in the public
mind some questions in regard to modern
explosives which were not discussed last
year, during the war with Spain. Curl
osity mas been especially aroused as TO the
keeping qualities of smokeless powder
and the possibility Of its igniting spontan-
eously.
II ought to be understood at the outset
that the term "smokeless powder" is APP
piled to a great variety of compounds
whose appearance and properties are al
most Identical, but which differ in certain
important details All of these powders
are of about the same color-a pale yell
lowish gray-whereas, the explosive used
@ generation ago, and 10 a limited extent
to-day. is dark brown or black. That was
a mixture of charcoal sulphur and inter,
and when burned emitted dense clouds OF
smoke The so-called smokeless powders
are made either of gun cotton or nitro
glycerine. or mixture of the two.
Gun cotton, it will be remembered, Is
composed of the hbrous material known to
chemists as "cellulose, forming the basis
of wood and cotton. This fiber is treated
with nitric and sulphuric acids. The result
ant product is a solid. Nitro-giycerine is
ordinary glycerne treated with the same
acids, and exists in fluid form When
mixed with a special kind of earth IL is
known as dynamite; and the latter form
is the most convenient one for blasting
and similar purposes. 1t should be borne
in mind that in making gun cotton the
acids are carefully washed out of the hber'
but they are left in the nltro-giycerlhe
as a part of that product,
the first much trouble was eXpe-
rienced in storing and handling both gun
cotton and ntro-glycerine, because a very
slight shock sufficed to set them off. Thls
difhculty has been obv!ated in the case of
gun cotton by wetting il. A charge for
the head of an automobile torpedo or TOT
shell to be hurled from compressed AR
gun may be kept we'll moistened and then
exploded by means of small piece or dry
gun cotton and the proper fuse. But there
seems to be no way of rendering nitro
glycerine equally safe without mixing IL
with something that will reduce It's expo
sive power proportionately to its pulk. 10
this day nitro-glycerine has always oeen
regarded as a dangerous substance TO deal
with.
The man who did more than any one
else to make this latter explosive usetul
and who was the inventor of dynamite
was the Swedish engineer Alfred Nobel
who died a year or two ago and left an
immense fortune to be devoted to the ad-
vancement of science. In 1873, eight or
nine years after he gave dynamite to the
world Nobel devised a compound which
he called blasting gelatne." This was
mixture Of gun cotton and nitro-glycerine
In order to get them to mix he was oblig-
ed to find a substance which would
dissolve the gun cotton. This he succeed
ed in discovering. Another ingredient,
which formed only q small part of the
compound was a sort of jelly, to give his
product the right consistency for moldiug
into strings or waters. Several years later
he modified his blasting gelatine slightly
and called it "ballistite.'
British ordnance officers initiated these
two substances so closely In making cor
dite" that Nobel sued them for infringing
his patents. Hiram Maxim also charged
| the British experts, Sir Frederick Abel and
| Prof. Dewar with the same offense. Cor
| dite, which derives its name from the
| stringy form into which the gelatinous
| pulp is pressed before drying for use in
cartridges, was a rather poor imitation
| after all. No end of trouble was experenc-
| ed with II for time.
The mixture did not at first prove to be
! a stable one That Is to say, under Ger
| tain circumstances it showed a disposition
| to disintegrate so that a considerable
| amount of the -glycerine would ooze
| out on the surface of the grains of DOW
| DER This phenomenon was known as
| sweating" The chief cause of the trou-
| BILE seems to have been a hot climate.
When cordite was taken to the Indies it
would spoil 1t was then regarded as I'M
safe, because of the free nitro-gIycerine;
but no serious accidents resulted from the
defect mentioned.
Another drawback to cordite was that it
developed intense heat, so that a machine
gun could not be operated with it for more
than two minutes. Finally the gases of
combustion corroded the inside of a gun
barrel in a ruinous way. To some extent
these drawbacks have been remedied by
more careful methods of manufacture. and
possibly by slight changes in the propor-
tons of the ingredients. For the last few
| years little has been heard on the sub
jeet and England still uses a powder that
as compound of gun cotton and nitro
| glycerine.
| The exact composition of cordite fs 5S
per cent, of nitro-glycerine, 81 of gun cot
| ton dissolved Ia acetone) and o of vase
| line, or mineral Jelly" The so-ealled
! Leonard powder" an American nven-
| ton. closely resembles Nobels blasting
gelatine and the English cordte. Ii con-
tains $50 parts of nitro-glycerine, 50 of
gun cotton dissolved in aeetone (alone or
mixed with acetate of amyD, 10 of lvco-
podium and four of finely triturated urea
crystals. 1t will be observed that il has
more nitro-glycerine than cordite Ger
| many used a Nobel smokeless powder for
time, and Italy bought out-and-out bal
listite.
But Germany soon became dissatisfied
with her venture, and has now practi-
cally discarded it, France, Austria-Hun-
gary, Denmark and Switzerland have for
three or four years been using snokeless
powder composed almost entirely or ex-
clusively of gun cotton, or "nitrated eel
| lulose." The Du Pont powder. largely
used by the United States army in The
war with Spain In the Krag-Jorgensen
rifles, was a gun cotton powder, ana
contained no nitro-glycerine
The opinion is expressed by EXPERTS that
powder Of this character is safer ~
handle, will stand changes of climate bet-
ter is less liable to deteriorate witb ooo
is not so destructive TO the bores of guns
and is not likely 10 ignite spontaneously.