Vilas County news. [volume] (Eagle River, Vilas County, Wis.) 1896-1927, 1904-06-20

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Some time ago l was standing in a
naval laboratory watching an elemen-
tary demonstration of the principles of
torpedo practice and submarine min
ing. To my horror my companion took
up piece of something which he had
deliberately assured me a moment be-
fore was gun cotton and applied light
to it. II fared away fiercely while !
waited for the worst, but the practical
Joker only watched it with a smile
Perfectly harmless" he said, when it
had burnt itself out; "the safest thing,
if you know what it will and will not
do. You can light cigar or blow up
a battleship with it,"
| subsequently saw 200 pounds of ii
which had been sunk in a creek ex-
plcded. and the water was thrown up
in a column eighty feet high, black
ened here and there by the fragments
of what had been a whale boat mo-
ment before. 1t is that knowledge OF
the peculiarities of an explosive, of its
likes and dislikes, of its natural habits,
so to speak, which has been sought
by chemists who pursue these strange
forms of research, and the constant
aim in later times has been TO find an
explosive at once powerful and reliable.
The old, common, black powder was
deemed an invention of the evil one
when it was invented, but those were
war-like days, and being simply made
of nitre. sulphur and charcoal, it held
its own for many years. Then came
the desire for more powerful explos
ives, and the development in powder
and ordnance has gone on simultane-
ously. a good, smokeless powder was
particularly desired and gun cotton
was used as the basis. When the ma
chine gun first came into use the old
powders soon produced an enormous
pail of smoke which rendered the guns
useless. Experiments were conduct
ed necessarily in the hope of hitting
on a good smokeless powder
The government would not look at
a powder which was based on that I'M
stable stuff, nitroglycerine, but the
chemists went on and at last Sir
Hiram Maxim, then without his knight
hood. patented a new smOkeless pow
der compound of nitroglycerine, gun
cotton and OIL The similarity be-
tween this composition and that of Sir
Frederick Abel and Prof. Dewar led
to legal action and a great contro-
versy, but it is generally recognized
that we owe the base of smokeless
powder to the famous inventor CT the
machine gun.
Then. however, inventors we're sent
off on a new track A warehouse fire
took place at Manchester, where picric
acid was stored in proximity to some
high explosives. The result was an
explosion of great violence and the
investigation showed what had not
then been suspected. that pictric acid
was in certain circumstances the most
deadly explosive known. Till that
time picric acid, which was obtained
by nitrat!ng indigo, had been used as
dyestuff only. because instead of being
blue. like its parent. ii was a brilliant
yellow. But the hint of its explosive
powers thus given led the chemists
to experiment with modern picric acid,
which is not made from indigo, but
from nitrated ccal tar products, and is
chemically known as tri1itrOphenol.
The French led the way. and meliniet
was introduced and the precedence
obtained by France fired the zeal Of
our own authorities.
Finding that large quantities of car
bolic acid or phenol had been bought
IN this country for France they sus-
pected that picric acid was at the base
of the new marvel. Their surmise'
was correct. Picric acid is a deadly
but eccentric explosive. If placed on
an anvil and struck with hammer it
will go off; if heated in pan over
fire it will simply evapOrate, but If
dropped into a receptacle at the same
temperature it will explode. The ex-
periments which were undertaken led
to the introduction of lyddite, which is
simply picric acid made less sensitive
by the admixture of di-nitro-benzol and
vaseline. Of course, the chief object
was to devise an explosive. which,
when loaded into a shell, would not
explode until the shell had pierced the
Iante had committed a great moral