Machine-gun versus Rifle.
This illustrates the rapidity and accuracy with which the modern rifle can be used. Sergeant O'Leary, V.C., tackled a gun crew of five and killed them all before they had time to slew their gun round—a striking contrast to the "Brown Bess" of a hundred years ago.
Another well-known explosive is gun-cotton. Surely
this must be a fancy name, for what can harmless, simple cotton have to do in connection with guns. It is a perfectly genuine descriptive name, however. It seems very strange at first, but it is perfectly true that nitrogen, as it turned glycerine into dynamite, can also turn cotton into gun-cotton. Cotton consists mainly of cellulose, a compound of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, happily combined together and therefore showing, as we well know from experience, no tendency whatever to change into anything else, least of all to "go off bang." But that state of things is very much changed when we have induced nitrogen to take a hand in the game.
In actual practice, cotton waste, pure and clean, is dipped into a mixture of sulphuric and nitric acids whereby the cellulose becomes changed into nitro-cellulose, just as a similar process changes glycerine into nitro-glycerine. The whole process of manufacture is of course far more than that simple dipping, but that is the fundamental fact of it all. The rest is concerned with getting rid of the superfluous acid, tearing the stuff into pulp and pressing it into blocks. It is probably the safest of explosives, since it can be kept wet, in which case the danger of an accidental explosion is practically nil, provided reasonable care be taken. Even when dry, it behaves in a very kindly way. If hit with a hammer, it only burns for a moment just at the point struck. If ignited with a red-hot rod, it burns but does not explode, unless it is enclosed. The burning, that is to say, is not sufficiently rapid to constitute an explosion.
On the other hand, if it be exploded by a detonator, by which is meant a small quantity of a very powerful explosive, such as fulminate of mercury, fired close
to it, it then goes off with a violence which leaves little to be desired.
It would be better still could we persuade a little more oxygen to enter into its composition, for as it is there is not quite enough to burn up the other matters completely. That, however, does not cause smoke, since the combustion is complete enough to change everything into invisible gases. With more oxygen more heat might be generated and the power of the explosion be made greater. Still, even as it is, the explosion of gun-cotton has been estimated by a high authority to produce a pressure of 160 tons per square inch, four times as much as gunpowder. Nitro-glycerine has the advantage of a rather larger proportion of oxygen to carbon, resulting in its being rather more energetic.
Yet another class of explosive is made from Coal Tar. This is a by-product in the manufacture of gas for lighting and also in the manufacture of coke for industrial purposes. It comes from the retorts along with the gas in a gaseous form but condenses into a black liquid in the pipes and more particularly in an arrangement of cooled pipes called a condenser specially placed to intercept it.
In the chemist's eyes it is the most interesting of liquids, for it is full of mysteries and possibilities. The most wonderful achievements of chemistry have it for their raw material and there is still scope for much more in the same direction.