"was synthesized by the Italian chemist Ascanio Sobrero in 1847. It was subsequently developed and manufactured by Alfred Nobel as an industrial explosive, but even then it was unsuitable as a propellant: despite its energetic and smokeless qualities, it detonates instead of deflagrating smoothly, making it more liable to shatter a gun, rather than propel a projectile out of it. Nitroglycerine is also highly sensitive, making it unfit to be carried in battlefield conditions. A major step forward was the invention of guncotton, a nitrocellulose-based material, by German chemist Christian Friedrich Schönbein in 1846. He promoted its use as a"
"explosives and obtained samples of Poudre B and Ballistite; neither of these smokeless powders was recommended for adoption by the Explosives Committee. Abel, Sir James Dewar and W Kellner, who was also on the committee, developed and jointly patented (Nos 5,614 and 11,664 in the names of Abel and Dewar) in 1889 a new ballistite-like propellant consisting of 58% nitroglycerine, by weight, 37% guncotton (nitrocellulose) and 5% petroleum jelly. Using acetone as a solvent, it was extruded as spaghetti-like rods initially called ""cord powder"" or ""the Committee's modification of Ballistite"", but this was swiftly abbreviated to ""Cordite"". Cordite began as"
"the ""Explosives Committee"" and chaired by Sir Frederick Abel, monitored foreign developments in explosives. Abel and Sir James Dewar, who was also on the committee, jointly patented a modified form of ballistite in 1889. This consisted of 58% nitroglycerin by weight, 37% guncotton and 5% petroleum jelly. Using acetone as a solvent, it was extruded as spaghetti-like rods initially called ""cord powder"" or ""the committee's modification of ballistite"", but this was soon abbreviated to cordite. After unsuccessful negotiations, in 1893, Nobel sued Abel and Dewar over patent infringement and lost the case. It then went to the Court of Appeal"
"less sensitive explosives such as TNT, RDX, and HMX have largely replaced it in munitions. It remains important in military engineering, and combat engineers still use dynamite. Alfred Nobel then developed ballistite, by combining nitroglycerin and guncotton. He patented it in 1887. Ballistite was adopted by a number of European governments, as a military propellant. Italy was the first to adopt it. The British government and the Commonwealth governments adopted cordite instead, which had been developed by Sir Frederick Abel and Sir James Dewar of the United Kingdom in 1889. The original Cordite Mk I consisted of 58% nitroglycerin, 37%"
"In 1894, Nobel purchased the Bofors iron and steel mill, which he made into a major armaments manufacturer. Nobel also invented ballistite. This invention was a precursor to many smokeless military explosives, especially the British smokeless powder cordite. As a consequence of his patent claims, Nobel was eventually involved in a patent infringement lawsuit over cordite. Nobel amassed a fortune during his lifetime, with most of his wealth coming from his 355 inventions, of which dynamite is the most famous. In 1888, Nobel was astonished to read his own obituary, titled ""The merchant of death is dead"", in a French"
"11th century onwards, but it had disadvantages, including the large quantity of smoke it produced. With the 19th-century development of various ""nitro explosives"", based on the reaction of nitric acid mixtures on materials such as cellulose and glycerine, a search began for a replacement for gunpowder. The first smokeless powder was developed in 1865 by Major Johann F. E. Schultze of the Prussian artillery. His formulation (dubbed ""Schultze Powder"") was composed of nitrolignose impregnated with saltpetre or barium nitrate. In 1882 the Explosive Company of Stowmarket introduced ""EC Powder""', which contained nitro-cotton and nitrates of potassium and barium in a"
"explosives he was developing. Nobel invented dynamite in 1867, a substance easier and safer to handle than the more unstable nitroglycerin. Dynamite was patented in the US and the UK and was used extensively in mining and the building of transport networks internationally. In 1875 Nobel invented gelignite, more stable and powerful than dynamite, and in 1887 patented ballistite, a predecessor of cordite. Nobel was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1884, the same institution that would later select laureates for two of the Nobel prizes, and he received an honorary doctorate from Uppsala University"
"Paul Marie Eugène Vieille Paul Marie Eugène Vieille (2 September 1854 – 14 January 1934), a graduate of Ecole Polytechnique, was a French chemist and the inventor of modern nitrocellulose-based smokeless gunpowder in 1884. The new smokeless powder was three times as powerful as black powder for the same weight and left virtually no residues of combustion. Paul Vieille soon became director of the ""Laboratoire Central des Poudres et Salpetres"" in Paris where his research had taken place. His invention was applied not only to small arms but also to the full range of artillery ammunition. His invention was widely"
"followed within a short time by all the major military powers. Vieille received the Prix Leconte (₣50,000) in 1889 in recognition of his discovery. Veille was a member of the French Academy of Sciences. Paul Marie Eugène Vieille Paul Marie Eugène Vieille (2 September 1854 – 14 January 1934), a graduate of Ecole Polytechnique, was a French chemist and the inventor of modern nitrocellulose-based smokeless gunpowder in 1884. The new smokeless powder was three times as powerful as black powder for the same weight and left virtually no residues of combustion. Paul Vieille soon became director of the ""Laboratoire Central"
"manufactured various high explosive powders for use in torpedoes, artillery shells, small arms ammunition (for the military and sporting) and mine blasting. The 'Smokeless Powder Company' was a world leader in its high explosive powders. S.P.C had over 100 employees at the factory. On 26 May 1893, there was an explosion & fire in one of the drying houses. As a result, company employees Mr A Aylott & Mr A Ginn both died in this incident[4] The accident was thoroughly investigated by H.M. Chief Inspector of Explosives - Colonel V.D.Majendie C.B; on 20 June 1893. In 1896 the Smokeless Powder"
"Company, was purchased by the New Schultze Gunpowder Company Limited, located at Eyeworth, Fritham, Hampshire.[5] As a result of this sale, the company was renamed the Smokeless Powder & Ammunition Company Limited in 1896. The company had two of Great Britain's greatest ballistics' experts working for it - Mr F W Jones & Mr R W S Griffith. The Smokeless Powder & Ammunition Company continued to produce high explosive powders until it ceased trading in circa 1910. Smokeless Powder Company In 1888 the 'Smokeless Powder Company', owned by James Dalziel Dougall Junior, the son of the famous glaswegian gunsmith -J"
"for torpedo and mine warheads. In 1884, Paul Vieille invented a smokeless powder called Poudre B (short for ""poudre blanche""—white powder, as distinguished from black powder) made from 68.2% insoluble nitrocellulose, 29.8% soluble nitrocellusose gelatinized with ether and 2% paraffin. This was adopted for the Lebel rifle. Vieille's powder revolutionized the effectiveness of small guns, because it gave off almost no smoke and was three times more powerful than black powder. Higher muzzle velocity meant a flatter trajectory and less wind drift and bullet drop, making 1000 meter shots practicable. Other European countries swiftly followed and started using their own"
"Army selected ""Ruby"" smokeless powder produced by the newly formed Leonard Smokeless Powder Company. Rather than pay the required royalties to manufacture ""Ballistite"", Laflin & Rand loaned the financially troubled Leonard company $30,000 to reorganize as the American Smokeless Powder Company. U.S. Army Lieutenant Garland Whistler assisted American Smokeless Powder Company factory superintendent Henry Aspinwall in formulating an improved powder. They reduced the nitroglycerine content from 58% to 30%; and the extruded formulation, named W.A. in recognition of their work, was cut into black perforated discs in diameter and thick. W.A. .30 caliber smokeless powder was the standard for United"
"B"" (e.g. Poudres BN3F and BPF1), ballistite and cordite. The guncotton problem is not completely solved even today, as an occasional batch of smokeless powder will still deteriorate, although this is extremely rare. Poudre B Poudre B was the first practical smokeless gunpowder. It was perfected between 1882 and 1884 at ""Laboratoire Central des Poudres et Salpêtres"" in Paris, France. Originally called ""Poudre V"", from the name of the inventor, Paul Vieille, it was arbitrarily renamed ""Poudre B"" (short for ""poudre blanche"" -- white powder, as distinguished from black powder) to distract German espionage. ""Poudre B"" is made from 68.2%"
"using less-concentrated acids at lower temperatures for smokeless powder in firearms. The first practical smokeless powder made from nitrocellulose, for firearms and artillery ammunition, was invented by French chemist Paul Vieille in 1884. Jules Verne viewed the development of guncotton with optimism. He referred to the substance several times in his novels. His adventurers carried firearms employing this substance. The most noteworthy reference is in his ""From the Earth to the Moon"", in which guncotton was used to launch a projectile into space. On May 2, 1887, Hannibal Goodwin filed a patent for ""a photographic pellicle and process of producing"
"shape or size. The creation of cordite led to a lengthy court battle between Nobel, Maxim, and another inventor over alleged British patent infringement. The Anglo-American Explosives Company began manufacturing its shotgun powder in Oakland, New Jersey in 1890. DuPont began producing guncotton at Carneys Point Township, New Jersey in 1891. Charles E. Munroe of the Naval Torpedo Station in Newport, Rhode Island patented a formulation of guncotton colloided with nitrobenzene, called ""Indurite"", in 1891. Several United States firms began producing smokeless powder when Winchester Repeating Arms Company started loading sporting cartridges with Explosives Company powder in 1893. California Powder"
"to be recommended."" The principle of the mixture was the enveloping of each particle of the salts in an elastic jelly composed of hydrocarbons and nitrogen. The jelly additionally supplied material to the explosion. An 1887 analysis gave the following composition: Kinetite Kinetite was an explosive material patented in 1884 by T. Petry and O. Fallenstein, It consisted of nitro-benzol thickened or gelatinised by the addition of some collodion-cotton incorporated with finely ground potassium chlorate and precipitated antimony sulphide. It is an orange coloured, plastic mass, with the characteristic strong smell of nitro-benzol. It was manufactured by dissolving gun cotton"
"was adopted as the standard technology for mining in the ""Age of Engineering"" bringing Nobel a great amount of financial success, though at a significant cost to his health. An offshoot of this research resulted in Nobel's invention of ballistite, the precursor of many modern smokeless powder explosives and still used as a rocket propellant. In 1888 Alfred's brother Ludvig died while visiting Cannes and a French newspaper erroneously published Alfred's obituary. It condemned him for his invention of dynamite and is said to have brought about his decision to leave a better legacy after his death. The obituary stated,"
"Alexander Just Alexander Friedrich Just (12 April 1874 in Bremen – 30 May 1937 in Budapest) was a German/Hungarian chemist and inventor. Later, in Hungary he used the name Just Sándor Frigyes. In 1904 with Croatian Franjo Hanaman he was the first to develop and patent an incandescent light bulb with a tungsten filament, made by extruding a paste of tungsten powder and a carbonaceous binder to produce a fine thread, then removing the carbon by heating in an atmosphere of hydrogen and water vapor. Just and Hanaman received a Hungarian patent in 1904 and later US Patent 1,018,502. In"
"in an alcohol-ether mixture which he then stabilized with amyl alcohol. He then used roller presses to transform this gelatinized colloidal substance into extremely thin sheets which, after drying, were cut up into small flakes. This single-base smokeless powder was originally named ""Poudre V"" after the inventor's name. That denomination was later changed arbitrarily to ""Poudre B"" in order to distract German espionage. The original ""Poudre B"" of 1884 was almost immediately replaced by improved ""Poudre BF(NT)"" in 1888. In 1896 ""Poudre BF(NT)"" was replaced by ""Poudre BF(AM)"" which was followed by ""Poudre BN3F"" in 1901. The latter was stabilized"
"Adolph Spitteler (1846–1940). The final result was unsuitable for the original purpose. In 1893, French chemist Auguste Trillat discovered the means to insolubilize casein by immersion in formaldehyde, producing material marketed as galalith. In the early 1900s, Bakelite, the first fully synthetic thermoset, was reported by Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland by using phenol and formaldehyde. After World War I, improvements in chemical technology led to an explosion in new forms of plastics, with mass production beginning in the 1940s and 1950s (around World War II). Among the earliest examples in the wave of new polymers were polystyrene (PS), first produced"
"Peter Woulfe Peter Woulfe (1727 – 1803) was an Irish chemist and mineralogist. He first had the idea that wolframite might contain a previously undiscovered element (tungsten). In 1771, Woulfe reported the formation of a yellow dye when indigo was treated with nitric acid. Later it was discovered by others that he had formed picric acid, which eventually was used as the first synthetic dye, an explosive and an antiseptic treatment for burns. Woulfe is credited with inventing, ca. 1767, the Woulfe Bottle, an apparatus for purifying or dissolving gases, which employed a bottle with two or three necks. Woulfe"
"as a propellant, and was adopted for the Lee–Metford rifle, which had rifling designed to lessen fouling from this propellant. The Lee–Metford was used as a trial platform by the British Committee on Explosives to experiment with many different smokeless powders then coming to market, including ""Ballistite"", ""Cordite"", and ""Rifleite"". ""Ballistite"" was a stick-type smokeless powder composed of soluble nitrocellulose and nitroglycerine. ""Cordite"" was a stick-type or 'chopped' smokeless gunpowder composed of nitroglycerine, gun-cotton, and mineral jelly, while ""Rifleite"" was a true nitrocellulose powder, composed of soluble and insoluble nitrocellulose, phenyl amidazobense, and volatiles similar to French smokeless powders. Unlike"
"guncotton, and 5.0% petroleum jelly. Ballistite and cordite were both manufactured in the forms of ""cords"". Smokeless powders were originally developed using nitrocellulose as the sole explosive ingredient. Therefore, they were known as single-base propellants. A range of smokeless powders that contains both nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin, known as double-base propellants, were also developed. Smokeless powders were originally supplied only for military use, but they were also soon developed for civilian use and were quickly adopted for sports. Some are known as sporting powders. Triple-base propellants contain nitrocellulose, nitroglycerin, and nitroguanidine, but are reserved mainly for extremely high-caliber ammunition rounds such"
"to Lammot du Pont and Mary Belin. He graduated with a degree in chemistry from MIT in 1890 and became assistant superintendent at Eleutherian Mills on the Brandywine River. He and his cousin Francis Gurney du Pont developed the first American smokeless powder in 1892 at the Carney's Point plant in New Jersey. Most of the 1890s he spent working with the management at a steel firm partly owned by DuPont (primarily by T. Coleman du Pont), the Johnson Street Rail Company in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Here he learned to deal with money from the company's president, Arthur Moxham. In 1899,"
"Galalith Galalith (Erinoid in the United Kingdom) is a synthetic plastic material manufactured by the interaction of casein and formaldehyde. The commercial name is derived from the Greek words ""gala"" (milk) and ""lithos"" (stone). It is odourless, insoluble in water, biodegradable, non-allergenic, antistatic and virtually nonflammable. It was produced under other names such as aladdinite (in the USA), Casolith (in the Netherlands) and lactoloid (in Japan). In 1893, French chemist Auguste Trillat discovered the means to insolubilize casein by immersion in formaldehyde. In 1897, Wilhelm Krische, a printer from Hanover, Germany was commissioned to develop white, non-flammable, erasable chalkboards. He"
"Eugène Turpin François Eugène Turpin (30 September 1848 – 24 January 1927) was a French chemist involved in research of explosive materials. He lived in Colombes. In 1881 Turpin proposed panclastites, a class of Sprengel explosives based on a mixture of a suitable fuel with dinitrogen tetroxide as an oxidizer. In 1885, based on research of Hermann Sprengel, Turpin patented the use of pressed and cast picric acid in blasting charges and artillery shells. In 1887 the French government adopted it under the name Melinite, with addition of gun cotton. Since 1888, Britain started manufacturing a very similar mixture in"
"the government monopoly on explosives manufacture and closed the Volkmann factory in 1875. In 1882, the Explosives Company at Stowmarket patented an improved formulation of nitrated cotton gelatinised by ether-alcohol with nitrates of potassium and barium. These propellants were suitable for shotguns but not rifles, because rifling results in resistance to a smooth expansion of the gas, which is reduced in smoothbore shotguns. In 1884, Paul Vieille invented a smokeless powder called Poudre B (short for ""poudre blanche""—white powder, as distinguished from black powder) made from 68.2% insoluble nitrocellulose, 29.8% soluble nitrocellulose gelatinized with ether and 2% paraffin. This was"
"Nick Manoloff invented the Nick Manoloff Tone Bar. He was granted a patent (#2073331) on March 9, 1937. The tone bar or steel was made of the revolutionary synthetic material known as bakelite. Bakelite (/ˈbeɪkəlaɪt/ BAY-kə-lyt, sometimes spelled Baekelite[3]), or polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolanhydride, is an early plastic. It is a thermosetting phenol formaldehyde resin, formed from an elimination reaction of phenol with formaldehyde. It was developed by Belgian-born chemist Leo Baekeland in New York in 1907. These slides were 2.75"" in length, 0.75"" in diameter, round on the tip end and flat on the other with inscription, ""Nick Manoloff Pat. 2076331."" They"
"the well-known soluble kind"". He offered to sell the rights of the new explosive to the French government, but they declined, largely because they had just adopted Poudre B for military use. He subsequently licensed the rights to the Italian government, who entered into a contract, on 1 August, 1889, to obtain 300,000 kilograms of Ballistite; and Nobel opened a factory at Avigliana, Turin. The Italian Army swiftly replaced their M1870 and M1870/87 rifles, which used black powder cartridges, to a new model, the M1890 Vetterli, which used a cartridge loaded with ballistite. As Italy was a competing great power"
"the épée bayonet was optimized for thrusting, designed to readily penetrate thick clothing and leather. The bayonet was dubbed ""Rosalie"" by French soldiers who were issued it during World War I. Historically, the Mle 1886 Lebel rifle was the first military firearm to use smokeless powder ammunition. This new propellant powder, made of stabilized nitrocellulose, was called """"Poudre B"""" (""Powder B"") and had just been invented in 1884 by Paul Vieille (1854-1934). ""Poudre B"" was three times as powerful as black powder, for the same weight, and left virtually no residues of combustion. At about the same time, in 1882,"
"Dynamite Dynamite is an explosive made of nitroglycerin, sorbents (such as powdered shells or clay) and stabilizers. It was invented by the Swedish chemist and engineer Alfred Nobel in Geesthacht, and patented in 1867. It rapidly gained wide-scale use as a more powerful alternative to black powder. Today dynamite is mainly used in the mining, quarrying, construction, and demolition industries. Dynamite is still the product of choice for trenching applications, and as a cost-effective alternative to cast boosters. Dynamite is occasionally used as an initiator or booster for AN and ANFO explosive charges. Dynamite was invented by Swedish chemist Alfred"
"'Alfred Bird and Sons Ltd', which would go on to become the famous Bird's Custard company and brand. Bird was not content to revolutionise custard but went on to invent a baking powder in 1843 so he could make yeast-free bread for his wife. This formula for baking powder is essentially the same as used in modern baking powders. Alfred Bird died on 15 December 1878 in Kings Norton, Worcestershire and is buried at Key Hill Cemetery in Birmingham. Famously his obituary in the journal of the Chemical Society (of which he was a fellow) discussed at length his skills"