PT and one crown - smokeless proof - Poudre T... T for niTro.
Could you source the “T” in nitro? It is possible, but there were J, S, R, M and possibly other powders about the same time. The French seem to have had the theoretical handle on semi-smokeless powders from the get-go. In the 1830s, Braconnot began the quest for a powder based on nitric acid as a professor at Nancy. In the late 1830s, French chemist Pelouze continued or confirmed Braconnot’s experiment using cotton and linen. Then in the mid 1840s Christian Fredxerick Schoenbein, Swiss chemist at Basle, who used his wife’s kitchen for a lab and with her apron absorbed a nitric acid spill and put it on the line. He thought he was in the clear but while the sunlight heated the apron, with acid, on the line, his confidence went up in flames. The question of who invented guncotton is between Pelouze and Schoenbein, who sold his secret to Austria. By the 1870s, Frederick Volkmann of Vienna was making Schultz and Volkmann powders under Volkmann K.K. Priv. Colliding-Fabriks Gesellschaft, H. Pernice & Company. The Austrian government closed his plant due to the applied, heavy license fees. But Paul Vielle in 1886 delivered Pouder B, which was named after General Boulanger. At the same time the French government peddled the inferior Poudre BN which contained metallic nitrates. Interesting too as to the influence of the French on powder advances, that is with American Industrial influence. On New Years day in 1800, Eleuthere Irenee du Pont de Nemours, son of Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours, compadre of Antoine Laurent Lavoisier who was a causality of the guillotine, arrived in Rhode Island after 91 days at sea eating boiled rats for sustiance the latter part of the trip. Lavoisier had been a tax collector for the French Crown and he decided to delve in gunpowder which was a huge benefit to the American rebels in the mid to late 1770s. Pierre Samuel had learned under Lavoisier and had escaped France and its guillotine. The short of the Du Pont story is that most, including Lamont Du Pont, with the exception of Henry, met their demise while making gunpowder or dynamite. And V L & D, after an explosion in Spring of 1881 in Binghamton, NY, formed a company, American Wood Powder???, to took over the Dittmar(Carl Dittmar of the Prussian Factory of Spandau near Berlin) powder production.
Kind Regards,
Raimey
rse
