Cordite: A very Un-British slice of History.

From Corn to Cordite.From Corn to Cordite.From Corn to Cordite.From Corn to Cordite. © Copyright John Williams 2010

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Chapter Three

Contents:

More problems for the explosives Industry:

Professor Frederick Abel.

Cordite: A very Un-British slice of History.

A Footnote in History

References.


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Chapter Three:

More problems for the explosives Industry

It would be cynical to comment on the fact that the Royal Ordnance

Factories were free of such regulation should they choose and suggest that there

were some double standards at work here. But could this perhaps be seen at just

the tip of the government’s deceitful iniquity, is this a harsh judgment? please

read on.

Professor Frederick Abel:

Nobel was less than impressed with the Alice in Wonderland

interpretation that had been placed upon the act by the ‘Powers that Be’. Nobel

went on to discover that the originator of the interpretation concerning the

manufacture of Dynamite was Frederick Abel (1827-1902), the brilliant chemist

who had done such sterling work on the stabilising of guncotton.

Nobel might have been forgiven for believing that Abel, who was a trade

competitor, was trying to delay his entry into the British market or even prohibit

the use of Dynamite altogether by using the unwieldy and ineffective Explosives

Act to his own ends. Abel was an important chemist, and undoubtedly by his

own lights an honourable man, an adviser to the War Office and Explosives

Adviser to the Government. Nobel did eventually obtain a licence in September

1887. But Frederick Abel had not finished with Nobel, as we will now see

Professor Abel was to remain a thorn in Nobel’s side until 1893.

Cordite- A very Un-British slice of History.

This section is included because it puts into context the problems that

beset the growing explosives industry and directly the reason why the Explosives

factory in Pitsea was formed. Cordite had a particularly painful inception.

Professors Abel and Dewar had ‘Officially’ invented it in 1889, but two private

industrialists, Hiram Maxim and Alfred Nobel claimed that the War Office had

rejected their exactly similar inventions in 1887. Between the two dates there had

been a Committee briefed to discover a military propellant. The suspicion was

that Abel and Dewar had misused their authority as members. Their

memorandum to the Director of Artillery began a national scandal, and sounded

more like a buccaneering plan of campaign than an official disclaimer: 'The

Committee will unavoidably come under the stigma of profiting from

information imparted in confidence in working out subjects which they

afterwards put forward as emanating from themselves.’ (1) The wording found

a strange echo in the fears of a trade spokesman that, 'Government officials look

upon the inventor as a natural enemy, frequently endeavouring to evade or use

his patents without remuneration in place of encouraging him and treating him

fairly’ (2)

The Times, disturbed by the fact that the two scientists had only taken

less six months of the three years allotted to them to 'discover' Cordite and


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commented, ‘No other inventors were so favoured as to have eighteen others

submit their best ideas to them’ (3)

When taking out patents, Abel and Dewar were then forced to assign the

British patents to the Secretary of State for War, but retained the foreign ones.

Thus the British government had paid for an explosive that had become the

common property of foreign nations to the profit of two private individuals! who

had acted as competitors and judges in the same public inquiry. (3) Arms and

Explosives reported on trade reactions, 'Private inventors are afraid to submit

ideas to the War Department,(and) private firms are discouraged in every way and

officials are free to abuse their position’ (4)

There is a useful and unreported document in the Essex records office that

contains a candid report by someone at Waltham Abbey. Pages 3 and 4 are

enlightening in particular the situation surrounding Mr A. Anderson. Mr E.

Anderson and Dr. V. Anderson. Abel and Dewar patented their invention of

Cordite (E.P. 5614,1889). This is not the place to go into the involved story line

and repercussions, but there were several patents which claimed to anticipate

them: Nobel's Ballistite patent, one by Engel one by Maxim and lastly one by

Messrs. Anderson of the Royal Laboratory, Woolwich, and the Stowmarket

Guncotton Works, this last confiscation of the paten protection seems to have

particularly annoying to the inventors. To quote from their report.... this was

taken out in November 1888 by special permission of the War Office, upon the

recommendation of the late Director General of Factories, and without any

conditions being imposed, for the production of a smokeless powder from gun-

cotton gelatinised by means of solvent. The complete specification of this patent

was lodged some time after the Committee had been engaged in experiments in

the Arsenal on the production of Cordite, the nature of which could not become

known to Mr. A. Anderson in his official capacity in the Department where part

of the Committees work is carried on and it included a claim which was not

indicated in the provisional Specification, namely that of employing explosives

generally in the form of threads, strips, cylinders and tubes produced by

squirting materials through holes or slits in metal or other plates. Such a serious

view of the possibilities of this specification was taken that the Cordite Patent

was kept secret lest possible proceedings by Messrs Anderson might have led to

the disclosure of details of manufacture not enlarged upon in the specification.


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It might be mischievous to point out at this juncture that the French

military in 1886 were the first to develop a smokeless propellant, the inventor

was Paul Vieille, they had pre-empted the nitration level of cellulose and the use

of solvents for processing, the difference was that the French chose not to use

Nitroglycerine as a secondary propellant. The material called Poudre B was in

use until 1945.

Today the reader is perhaps more interested in the sidelight thus thrown

upon some Civil Servants of the day. The exact position and relation of Mr A

Anderson, Messrs Anderson of Stowmarket, Messrs Easton and Anderson and

Mr E. Anderson of that firm as well as Dr. V. Anderson, the Director General of

Ordnance Factories, has not been elucidated but the coincidence of the names is

intriguing.

The following paragraph is the hand written insertion intended for inclusion at

this point:

Nobel’s Explosives Company claiming that the Abel-Dewar patent is an infringement of Nobel’s Ballistite Patent, took the committee to court and lost its claim, having to pay £25,000 costs. Mr Justice Roberts judgement was based on the fact that Nobel had only ‘definitely described’ the use of soluble nitrocellulose and whereas Dewar and Abel had used the insoluble nitro-cotton.

Before passing on to the commencement of Cordite manufacture at

Waltham Abbey attention should be drawn to another notable piece of work by

this committee, namely the invention of the Abel Heat Test that is still used as a

standard test for the stability of explosives.

The committee thereupon took steps to investigate experimentally the

production of a substitute propellant containing no volatile ingredients. They

(inserted hand written note) ‘used guncotton instead of the soluble nitrocellulose

and’ adopted a method of manufacture slightly different from Nobel’s in that

the ingredients were kneaded together with a solvent such as acetone instead of

being worked between steam heated rollers without a solvent. They quickly

obtained promising results and also hit on the idea of making a change in the

form by forcing the preparation while in a suitably plastic state through a die of

the requisite diameter. The mixture, numbered 128 in the original series

became ‘Cordite Mark I’ its composition was Nitroglycerine 58%, Trinitro-

cellulose 37%, Vaseline 5%. The name ‘Cordite appears to have been first used

in the Proceedings of the Committee for 5th June 1889. Before that the material

had been referred to as ‘Cord Powder’ or ‘The Committee’s modification of

Ballistite’ . (5)

As soon as Cordite was approved by the War Office in May 1893 Nobels

took the initiative. Already experienced in monopoly practice - Nobels then took

the lead in heading up the International Dynamite Ring - the firm laid siege to

the Cordite market.

After an encouraging interview at the War Office, the firm erected a plant at

Ardeer in Ayrshire capable of supplying all the military requirements and

warned all competitors’ (6) including the government (7) (8), that it would sue

for infringement of its patents for Ballistite (a close relative of Cordite).


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When the War Office began manufacture of Cordite, Nobel was in the

invidious option of declaring the field wide open or on the other hand of biting

the hand, which held the order book.

The directors decided on the latter alternative, but after they lost the test

case in Chancery (9) they redoubled their renegade activities. However the first

Cordite contract was by no means a triumphant return by the government to the

principal of free competition after their dangerous flirtation with monopoly.

As it turned out only five firms were invited to tender: Kynoch Ltd, The

National Explosives Company, The Nobel-Chilworth combine, the Cotton

Powder Company, and Curtiss and Harvey, this presaged the development of a

ring.

Nobels were obviously relying on their unique production capacity to

make a highly priced quote acceptable, but not even this could justify a

figure of over double Waltham Abbey's estimate. Much more surprising

was the official tampering with the tenders for instance Kynochs were

beaten down in price before an order was allotted, National Explosives were

allowed a small order for Cordite in 1898. In these instances the government was

introducing a ‘nursing policy’ to encourage the installation of extra production

plant. We see here the opportunity that was later seized upon by George

McRoberts to set up shop in Pitsea. Later the downturn in the Governments

requirement for Cordite was apparent, for instance the dividends of Nobels

dipped in the 1903-1905 period.

The Ordnance Factories or Filling Establishments, who were the packers

of Cordite, were exerting a great deal of control on Suppliers for instance an

‘eight hour clause’ was included in contracts from 1894. The Arms and

Explosives journal were explicit in their stated belief that the government

intended to force makers to adopt labour saving machinery and strict

supervision and about the threat of plans to control wages.

The legal challenges that Nobel made are an interesting demonstration of the

situation of the State on one hand and on the other a very wealthy powerful

man. For a taste of the legal niceties the reader can do no better than to read the

‘Letters to the Editor’ in the Times. (10, (11).

A Footnote in History.

A disappointed man would have been Mr Hiram Stevens Maxim.

Maxim invented a machine gun which should be automatically loaded and

repeatedly fired by the action of the recoil it was demonstrated in an

underground range at Hatton Garden, London in 1884, He invented a smokeless

powder, and accordingly he devised Maximite which was a mixture of Trinitro-

cellulose, nitroglycerine and castor oil, which was patented in 1888 and 1889. In

his initial patent No 18,663 December 20, 1888 he had intended to add from 2 to

10% of Nitroglycerine to a solution of guncotton in acetone but when he

completed his full specification No 4477 in March 14th 1889 he said that oil,

preferably Castor oil be added to compounds of dissolved guncotton in

Nitroglycerine, with no mention of acetone. This oversight or mistake lost him

the chance of claiming the patent rights


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References:

(1) P.R.O, W.O /32/1221.82 G.E.N /210. (15) Arms and Explosives Apr 1895. (16) The Times 12 Sept 1893. (17) Arms and Explosives Sept 1893. (18) ERO T/B 330/2 c.1890 Explosions and their prevention 1787-1887

Anonymous typescript essay: including details of explosions, findings of committees and compensation offered discourses on the development of Nitroglycerine and gunpowder and on the gradual introduction of safety measures.

(19) Arms and Explosives- the semi-official journal of the armaments industry, Aug. 1893.

(20) P.R.O W.O /32/984.74/6/679. (21) The Government’s Tri-nitro-cellulose version of Cordite was held not to

infringe the patents for Nobel's Di-nitro-cellulose Ballistite . The decision depended on the structure of a molecule. Trebilcock R.C. A ‘Special Relationship’- Government, Rearmament and the Cordite Firms. Economic History review, 2nd series, Vol. 19, no2, 1966.

(22) The Times February 9. 1894 Nobel vs. Anderson. The Cordite case (23) The Times February 15. 1894. (24) The Times July 19. 1894.

Cordite: A very Un-British slice of History.

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