Smokeless Powder - Nitroglycerine and Guncotton

Nitroglycerine and Guncotton

Nitroglycerine was discovered by Professor Sobrero in Turin in 1846 subsequently developed and manufactured by Alfred Nobel but it was unsuitable as a propellant. A major step forward was the discovery of guncotton, a nitrocellulose-based material, by Swiss chemist Christian Friedrich Schönbein in 1846. He promoted its use as a blasting explosive and sold manufacturing rights to the Austrian Empire. Guncotton was more powerful than gunpowder, but at the same time was somewhat more unstable. John Taylor obtained an English patent for guncotton; and John Hall & Sons began manufacture in Faversham. English interest languished after an explosion destroyed the Faversham factory in 1847. Austrian Baron von Lenk built two guncotton plants producing artillery propellent, but it was dangerous under field conditions, and guns that could fire thousands of rounds using gunpowder would reach their service life after only a few hundred with the more powerful guncotton. Small arms could not withstand the pressures generated by guncotton. After one of the Austrian factories blew up in 1862, Thomas Prentice & Company began manufacturing guncotton in Stowmarket in 1863; and British War Office chemist Sir Frederick Abel began thorough research at Waltham Abbey Royal Gunpowder Mills leading to a manufacturing process that eliminated the impurities in nitrocellulose making it safer to produce and a stable product safer to handle. Abel patented this process in 1865, when the second Austrian guncotton factory exploded. After the Stowmarket factory exploded in 1871, Waltham Abbey began production of guncotton for torpedo and mine warheads.