Gunpowder, Experiments

According to Luckow, tire best quality of litho-fraktour should have a capacity of six or seven times the amount of gunpowder. Experiments which were carried out witli dynamite and lithofi-akteuc showed the following results —... 

Within every fifteen square miles in Germany was a Farben-Dynamit A.G. installation. There was not an area of twenty-five square miles unpocked by Farben experiments, not an area of thirty-five square miles without at least one factory which made bullets or gunpowder or high explosives. 

These dangerous early experiments led to many secret or banned recipes, but enough information was disseminated to enable the details of the discovery to be brought to Europe. However, the place and date of the invention of true gunpowder are still unknown and have been the subject of extensive but inconclusive investigation. 

Guns were invented shortly after Bacon s death in about 1292 and so he never used the term gunpowder . However, he had certainly had experience of fireworks for which his early black powder recipe would have been perfectly suitable. In the Opus Majus he wrote ... 

In 1775, Lavoisier was appointed Chief of the Royal Gunpowder Administration. In this position, Lavoisier reformulated French gunpowders and improved their quality to become the best in Europe. At his arsenal lab, Lavoisier continued his chemical experiments. Lavoisier focused much of his attention on acids. He was the first to use the term oxygine in September of 1777, a word derived from the Greek terms oxys and gen meaning acid producing. Lavoisier believed incorrectly oxygine was a basic component in all acids. 

Frederick Abel, the chemist of English War Dept, started experiments and manuf on a small scale of GC in the Royal Gunpowder Factory at Waltham Abbey and succeeded in obtaining by 1865 more stable product than that of von Lenk (Ref 11, p 40) (See also below under 1865)... 

Fire, her universal agent, is the principle of elementary fire. The latter is nourished by all fat matters, because all that which is fat is of a humid and aerial nature. Although, externally, it may appear dry to us, as sulphur, gunpowder, etc., experience teaches us that this exterior conceals a fat, oily moisture, which is resolved by the action of heat. 

So much for experimenting with factory smokeless powder. How a-bout making your own. You have to be a genius to make smokeless powder, If you want to try It, read Chemistry of Powder and Explosives and Gunpowder in Britannica Encyclopedia. Black Gunpowder is safe to use In all modern cartridges and most improvised cartridges. 

In the 1830s and 1840s, European chemists discovered that cotton dipped in nitric acid produced an explosive material. This early form of nitrocellulose was too unstable to be used safely in explosives production. Scientists later converted nitrocellulose into a stable base for improved gunpowder known as smokeless powder. Further experiments revealed that a combination of nitrated natural fibers with ether and alcohol produced a nonexplosive solution that hardened into a film. This discovery led to a wide array of end uses for nitrocellulose including plastics, lacquers, and photographic film. 

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