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One is made from carbolic acid, which is familiar to us all by its use
as a disinfectant. If this is treated with nitric and sulfuric acids we
get from it picric acid, a yellow crystalline solid. Every government
has its own secret formula for this type of explosive. The British call
theirs "lyddite," the French "melinite" and the Japanese "shimose."
The third kind of high explosives uses as its base toluol. This is not
so familiar to us as glycerin, cotton or carbolic acid. It is one of the
coal tar products, an inflammable liquid, resembling benzene. When
treated with nitric acid in the usual way it takes up like the others
three nitro groups and so becomes tri-nitro-toluol. Realizing that
people could not be expected to use such a mouthful of a word, the
chemists have suggested various pretty nicknames, trotyl, tritol,
trinol, tolite and trilit, but the public, with the wilfulness it always
shows in the matter of names, persists in calling it TNT, as though it
were an author like G.B.S., or G.K.


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