The Newest Explosive

Abstract

GUN-COTTON and dynamite, which have for some years past held the foremost rank among modern explosives are no longer, it seems, to retain this honour undisputed. A compound more violent still than either of these well-known preparations has lately been given to the world by M. Nobel in the shape of blasting-gelatine, and blasting-gelatine, again, has been endowed with still greater energy by a modification in its nature, effected by Prof. Abel, the War Department chemist. So far as experiment has shown, the gelatine and modified gelatine are, without doubt, the most active explosive agents known to us, or, in other words, a given weight of these compounds will work more destruction upon metal, stone, or other unyielding mass, than any of the hundred and one bodies of a like character with which we have become acquainted during the past half-century.