A Colorado saloon keeper wrote in
to complain that one of the billiard players had touched a ball with a
lighted cigar, which set it off and every man in the room had drawn his
gun.
The trouble with the dissolved guncotton was that it could not be
molded. It did not swell up and set; it merely dried up and shrunk. When
the solvent evaporated it left a wrinkled, shriveled, horny film,
satisfactory to the surgeon but not to the man who wanted to make balls
and hairpins and knife handles out of it. In England Alexander Parkes
began working on the problem in 1855 and stuck to it for ten years
before he, or rather his backers, gave up. He tried mixing in various
things to stiffen up the pyroxylin. Of these, camphor, which he tried in
1865, worked the best, but since he used castor oil to soften the mass
articles made of "parkesine" did not hold up in all weathers.
Another Englishman, Daniel Spill, an associate of Parkes, took up the
problem where he had dropped it and turned out a better product,
"xylonite," though still sticking to the idea that castor oil was
necessary to get the two solids, the guncotton and the camphor,
together.
Pages:
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208