Abstract
THE recent discussion in Parliament on our supplies of cordite and our productive capacity for this type of smokeless powder has naturally directed public attention to these important questions. The production of a smokeless powder was ever the dream of the military strategist, and with the discovery of gun-cotton the conclusion was hastily arrived at that the ideal propellant was found, only to be rudely dissipated by numerous serious disasters. Gun-cotton for many years resisted all attempts to render its combustion sufficiently under control for it to be adopted as a propellant, yet to-day it is the basis of the smokeless powders of all nations. Its early failures were entirely due to the retention in the nitrated cotton of the physical characters of the parent cotton, for even after reduction to an extremely fine state of division during the process of manufacture, the fibrous nature of the cotton persisted. Success has only been attained by the destruction of this fibre, and the smokeless powders of all nations may be classed either as simple gelatinised gun-cottons in which soluble nitro-celluloses have been gelatinised by treatment with an ether-alcohol mixture, or as nitrocellulose-nitroglycerine colloids, in which the nitrocellulose employed may be of the soluble variety, as'in ballistite, or the insoluble (true gun-cotton), as in the case of cordite.
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Cordite . Nature 84, 109–110 (1910). https://doi.org/10.1038/084109a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/084109a0