In this the oxygen necessary for
the combustion is already in such close combination with its fuel, the
carbon and hydrogen, that no black particles of carbon can get away
unburnt. In the old-fashioned gunpowder the oxygen necessary for the
combustion of the carbon and sulfur was in a separate package, in the
molecule of potassium nitrate, and however finely the mixture was
ground, some of the atoms, in the excitement of the explosion, failed to
find their proper partners at the moment of dispersal. The new gunpowder
besides being smokeless is ashless. There is no black sticky mass of
potassium salts left to foul the gun barrel.
The gunpowder period of warfare was actively initiated at the battle of
Cressy, in which, as a contemporary historian says, "The English guns
made noise like thunder and caused much loss in men and horses."
Smokeless powder as invented by Paul Vieille was adopted by the French
Government in 1887. This, then, might be called the beginning of the
guncotton or nitrocellulose period--or, perhaps in deference to the
caveman's club, the second cellulose period of human warfare.
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