Mercury fulminate discovery

According to Romocki [2], in 1630, the Dutchman, van Drebbel was the first chemist to investigate mercury fulminate, and explosive gold . The first description of the laboratory preparation of mercury fulminate is given in Kunkel s book Laboratorium Chymicum published in 1690 [3]. This substance was described again by Howard in 1799-1800 [4]. No further discoveries of other primary explosives were made until the development of modern chemistry. 

The discovery of mercury fulminate [Hg(CNO)2] by Alfred Nobel in 1864 improved the initiation process. This chemical complex replaced the black powder in the initiation of nitroglycerine in boreholes. 

Detonation as a phenomenon of nature is a comparatively recent scientific discovery. First observed in mercury fulminate in the late eighteenth century, it was only described in detail and defined during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was also during the second half of the nineteenth century that most solid, high explosives were discovered as the most powerful known sources of chemical energy, they rapidly found their place among substances of technological interest. 

Amalgams with the alkali metals are readily formed by plunging the latter into warmed mercury. They are of interest in that by using a mercury cathode, Sir Humphry Davy in 1807 was able to isolate both potassium and sodium by electrolysis of potash and soda (p. 144). Mercury is used to-day in the commercial manufacture of caustic soda and hydrochloric acid by the electrolysis of brine. It is used also as the raw material for the preparation of mercuric oxide, vermilion, mercurous and mercuric chloride, fulminate and other derivatives. The oxide is of special historical interest as it led 170 years ago to the discovery of oxygen (p. 21)... 

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