The invention of nitrocellulose

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

His wife had strictly forbidden him to conduct experiments in the house, but the German-born Swiss chemist Christian Friedrich Schönbein sometimes disobeyed her when she was away.

One day in 1845, when his wife was out, while experimenting in the kitchen, Schönbein accidentally spilled a mixture of nitric acid and sulfuric acid on the floor.

In a panic, he grabbed the first useful object he could find, his wife's cotton apron, and cleaned up the mess.

When he then hung it over the stove to dry it more quickly, the apron exploded, with a loud bang and a great flash, and caught fire, but without producing smoke.

The wife's reaction upon her return home, when she realized that her husband was continuing his experiments, against her will, is unknown.

What is certain, however, is that Schönbein, quite by chance, had come to the invention of "fulminating cotton" or nitrocellulose: the era of smokeless gunpowder was beginning.

Schönbein sold his discovery to an English entrepreneur, but production ended in tragedy, when an explosion caused the death of about twenty workers.

After this accident, Schönbein stopped experimenting with nitrocellulose (to the delight of his wife), but his ideas were later useful to Alfred Nobel, to develop dynamite.

And it all started from the deflagrating apron of the wife of a Swiss chemist.

 

120

[Subdeacon Joe]

"Honest, Honey!  It was just too much ghost pepper in the sauce!"

Edited December 9, 2024 by Subdeacon Joe

[Capt. James H. Callahan]

[Abilene Slim SASS 81783]

AKA guncotton. 

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

New word deflagrating

 

[Painted Mohawk SASS 77785]

Ah ..double based !

[Forty Rod SASS 3935]

That doesn't seem so much an "invention" as a "discovery".  Either way I'm glad it happened.

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

Did he at least replace the apron?

[Capt. R. Hugh Kidnme]

The wife needed to order the Hexclad apron. According to tv ads, it withstands explosions.