Christian Friedrich Schönbein, a national of the Duchy of Württemberg who was a professor at the University of Basel in Switzerland, inadvertently discovered guncotton [Nitrocellulose] in 1845 when he spilled a mixture of nitric acid and sulfuric acid and used his wife’s cotton apron to mop it up. When Schönbein hung the apron over the stove to dry, it spontaneously ignited and burned without smoke so quickly that it appeared to disappear. For years, chemists had been trying to develop a propellant which produced less fouling in the bore of weapons and less smoke than black powder. Looking at the properties of his accidental discovery, Schönbein was quick to realize the possibilities of the substance in creating an improved propellant for firearms. Schönbein received a U.S. patent for guncotton as a propellant for firearms ammunition in 1846.
In 1849 Captain Nikolaus Wilhelm Freiherr Lenk von Wolfsberg, began the Austrian Army's (k.k. Army) experiments with guncotton as a possible propellant for artillery and small arms. Lenk’s experiments led to the first production of guncotton on an industrial scale. In 1854 the k.k. ärarische Schießwollanstalt [Imperial Royal State-Owned Guncotton Institute] was founded in Hirtenberg, Austria. The factory produced guncotton as a propellant for the k.k. Army’s artillery, and later for small arms. There were a number of advantages to the use of guncotton as a propellant. In comparison to black powder it produced very little smoke, and virtually no fouling in the bore of the weapon. It was also much more resistant to damage from exposure to moisture or water than black powder, and it was substantially more powerful than black powder. The impulse of burning guncotton on the base of the System Lorenz compression bullet was so effective, for example, that one could find no trace of the two compression grooves on fired bullets. Had guncotton worked as Lenk and Lorenz hoped, the results would have been revolutionary. There were problems in its use, however. Lenk’s production process left small quantities of acid in the guncotton which caused it to be unstable over time. This resulted in explosions at the factory, and produced unpredictable burning rates in guncotton which led to bursting of artillery barrels. When Lenk attempted to use guncotton as a high explosive filler for artillery shells, the acceleration of the shell when the gun was fired sometimes caused the explosion of the shell in the barrel of the artillery piece. The k.k. Army’s experiments with guncotton essentially ended in 1865 following the explosion of two magazines at the Institute resulting from the spontaneous combustion of guncotton stored in the magazines. It was not until 1884 that Frenchman Paul Marie Eugene Vieille created Poudre B, which was the first stable and successful smokeless powder. The French Army’s deployment of cartridges loaded with Poudre B immediately started the next round in the small arms technology race among the military forces of the world.
Regards,
Don Dixon