Now guncotton looks like common cotton. It is too light and loose to
pack well into a gun. So it is dissolved with ether and alcohol or
acetone to make a plastic mass that can be molded into rods and cut into
grains of suitable shape and size to burn at the proper speed.

Here, then, we have a liquid explosive, nitroglycerin, that has to be
soaked up in some porous solid, and a porous solid, guncotton, that has
to soak up some liquid. Why not solve both difficulties together by
dissolving the guncotton in the nitroglycerin and so get a double
explosive? This is a simple idea. Any of us can see the sense of
it--once it is suggested to us. But Alfred Nobel, the Swedish chemist,
who thought it out first in 1878, made millions out of it. Then,
apparently alarmed at the possible consequences of his invention, he
bequeathed the fortune he had made by it to found international prizes
for medical, chemical and physical discoveries, idealistic literature
and the promotion of peace. But his posthumous efforts for the
advancement of civilization and the abolition of war did not amount to
much and his high explosives were later employed to blow into pieces the
doctors, chemists, authors and pacifists he wished to reward.

Nobel's invention, "cordite," is composed of nitroglycerin and
nitrocellulose with a little mineral jelly or vaseline. Besides cordite
and similar mixtures of nitroglycerin and nitrocellulose there are two
other classes of high explosives in common use.

One is made from carbolic acid, which is familiar to us all by its use
as a disinfectant. If this is treated with nitric and sulfuric acids we
get from it picric acid, a yellow crystalline solid. Every government
has its own secret formula for this type of explosive. The British call
theirs "lyddite," the French "melinite" and the Japanese "shimose."