The Romance of War Inventions.

by Thomas W. Corbin.

CHAPTER I

HOW PEACEFUL ARTS HELP IN WAR

In the olden times warfare was supported by a single trade, that of the armourer. Nowadays the whole resources of the greatest manufacturing nations scarcely suffice to supply the needs of their armies. So much is this the case that no nation can possibly hope to become powerful in a military or naval sense unless they are either a great manufacturing community or can rely upon the support of some great manufacturing ally or neutral.

It is most astonishing to find how closely some of the most innocent and harmless of the commodities of peace are related to the death-dealing devices of war. Of these no two examples could be more striking than the common salt with which we season our food and the soap with which we wash. Yet the manufacture of soap furnishes the material for the most furious of explosives and the chief agent in its manufacture is the common salt of the table.

Common salt is a combination of the metal sodium and the gas chlorine.

There are many places, of which Cheshire is a notable example, where vast quant.i.ties of this salt lie buried in the earth.

Fortunately it is very easily dissolved in water so that if wells be sunk in a salt district the water pumped from them will have much salt in solution in it. This is how the underground deposits are tapped. It is not necessary for men to go down as they do after coal, for the water excavates the salt and brings it to the surface.

To obtain the solid salt from the salt water, or brine as it is called, it is only necessary to heat the liquid, when the water pa.s.ses away as steam leaving the salt behind.

Important though this salt is in connection with our food, it is perhaps still more important as the source from which is derived chlorine and caustic soda. How this is done can best be explained by means of a simple experiment which my readers can try in imagination with me or, better still, perform for themselves.

Take a tumbler and fill it with water with a little salt dissolved in it. Next obtain two short pieces of wire and two pieces of pencil lead, which with a pocket lamp battery will complete the apparatus. Connect one piece of wire to each terminal of the battery and twist the other end of it round a piece of pencil lead. Place these so that the ends of the leads dip into the salt water. It is important to keep the wires out of the solution, the leads alone dipping into the liquid, and the two leads should be an inch or so apart.

In a few moments you will observe that tiny bubbles are collecting upon the leads and these joining together into larger bubbles will soon detach themselves and float up to the surface. Those which arise from one of the leads will be formed of the gas chlorine and the others of hydrogen.

It will be interesting just to enumerate the names of the different parts of this apparatus. First let me say that the process by which these gases are thus obtained is called electrolysis: the liquid is the electrolyte: the two pieces of pencil lead are the electrodes. That electrode by which the current enters the electrolyte is called the an-ode, while the other is the cath-ode. In other words, the current traverses them in alphabetical order.

Now it is familiar to everyone that all matter is supposed to consist of tiny particles called Molecules. These are far too tiny for anyone to see even with the finest microscope, so we do not know for certain that they exist: we a.s.sume that they do, however, because the idea seems to fit in with a large number of facts which we can observe and it enables us to talk intelligibly about them. We may, accordingly, speak as if we knew for a certainty that molecules really exist.

Now when we dissolve salt in water it seems as if each molecule splits up into two things which we then call "ions." Salt is not peculiar in this respect, for many other substances do the same when dissolved in water. All such substances, since they can be "ionized," are called "ionogens."

Now the peculiarity about ions is that they are always strongly electrified or charged with electricity.

At this stage we must make a little excursion into the realm of electricity. You probably know that if a rod of gla.s.s be rubbed with a silk handkerchief it becomes able to attract little sc.r.a.ps of paper.

That is because the rubbing causes it to become charged with electricity. In like manner a piece of resin if rubbed will become charged and will also attract little pieces of paper. A piece of electrified resin and an electrified gla.s.s rod will, moreover, attract each other, but two pieces of resin or two pieces of gla.s.s, if electrified, will repel each other. This leads us to believe that there are two kinds of electrification or two kinds of electrical charge. At first these two kinds were spoken of as vitreous or gla.s.s electricity and resinous electricity, but after a while the idea arose that there was really one kind of electricity and that everything possessed a certain amount of it, the electrified gla.s.s having a little too much of it and the electrified resin a shade too little of it. From this came the idea of calling the charge on the gla.s.s a "positive" charge and that on the resin a "negative" charge. Recent investigations seem to show that we have got those two terms the wrong way round, but to avoid confusion we still use them in the old way.

It will be sufficient for our purpose, therefore, if we a.s.sume that every molecule of matter has a certain normal amount of electricity a.s.sociated with it and that under those conditions the presence of the electricity is not in any way noticeable. When a molecule becomes ionized, however, one ion always seems to run off with more than its fair share of the electricity, the result being that one is electrified positively, like rubbed gla.s.s, while the other is negatively charged, like rubbed resin.

Thus, when the common salt is dissolved in water, two lots of ions are formed, one lot positively charged and the other lot negatively. Each molecule of salt consists of two atoms, one of sodium and one of chlorine: consequently, one ion is a chlorine atom and the other is a sodium atom, the latter being positive and the former negative.

Now the electrodes are also charged by the action of the battery. That connected to the positive pole of the battery becomes positively charged and the other negatively. The anode, therefore, is positive and the cathode negative.

It has been pointed out that two similarly charged bodies, such as two pieces of gla.s.s or two pieces of resin, repel each other, while either of these attracts one of the other sort. Hence we arrive at a rule that similarly charged bodies repel each other, while dissimilarly charged bodies attract each other.

Acting upon this rule, therefore, the anode starts drawing to itself all the negative ions, in this case the atoms of chlorine, while the cathode gathers together the positive ions, the atoms of sodium. Thus the action of the battery maintains a sorting out process by which the sodium is gathered together around one of the electrodes and the chlorine round the other. Those ions, by the way, which travel towards the _an_-ode are called _an_-ions, while those which go to the cath-ode are termed cat-ions.

Thus far, I think, you will have followed me: the chlorine is gathered to one place and the sodium to the other. The former creates bubbles and floats up to the surface and escapes. But where, you will ask, does the hydrogen come from, which we found, in the experiment, was bubbling up round the cathode. Moreover, what becomes of the sodium?

Both those questions can be answered together. The sodium ions, having been drawn away from their old partners the chlorine ions, are unhappy, and long for fresh partners. They therefore proceed to join up with molecules of water. But water contains too much hydrogen for that. Every molecule of water has two atoms of hydrogen linked up with one of oxygen, but sodium does not like two atoms of hydrogen: it insists on having one only. Accordingly the oxygen atom from the water, together with one of the hydrogen atoms, join forces with the sodium atom into a molecule of a new substance, a most valuable substance in many manufactures, called Caustic Soda, while the odd atom of hydrogen, deprived of its partners, has nothing left to do but to cling for a while to the cathode and finally float up and away.

The sum-total of the operation therefore is this: when we pa.s.s an electric current through salt water, between graphite electrodes, chlorine goes to the anode and escapes, while caustic soda is formed round the cathode and hydrogen escapes. Let us see now how this is applied commercially.

For the production of Chlorine the apparatus need be little more than our experimental apparatus made large. The anode can be covered in such a way as to catch the gas as it bubbles upwards. In times of peace this gas is chiefly used for making bleaching powder. It is led into chambers where it comes into contact with lime, with which it combines into chloride of lime, a powder which is sometimes used as a disinfectant, but the chief use of which is for bleaching those cotton and woollen fabrics for the manufacture of which this country is famous throughout the world.

The Germans, however, have taught the world another use for chlorine.

Those gallant Canadians who were the first victims of the attack by "poison gas" who suddenly found themselves fighting for breath, and a few of whom, more fortunate than the rest, have reached their homes shattered in health with permanent damage to their lungs, those brave fellows suffered from poisoning by chlorine.

We cannot obtain the other product, the caustic soda, by the same simple means. In our little experiment we succeeded in manufacturing some of it in the region around the cathode, and had we drawn off some of the liquid from there we would have been able to detect its presence. But it would have been mixed up with much ordinary salt, and for commercial purposes we need the caustic soda separate from the salt. The principle is, however, just the same, as you will see.

Imagine a large oblong vat divided by vertical part.i.tions into three separate chambers. These part.i.tions do not quite reach the bottom of the vessel, so that there is a means of communication between all three chambers. This is closed, however, by filling the lower part of the vat with mercury up to a level a little higher than the lower ends of the part.i.tions.

Thus we have three separate chambers with communication between them but that communication is sealed up by the mercury.

The two end chambers are filled with salt water, or brine, while the centre one is filled with a solution of caustic soda. In each end compartment is a stick of graphite, both being electrically joined together and so connected up that they form anodes, while in the centre compartment is the cathode.

When the current flows from the anodes it carries the sodium ions with it, just as it did in our little experiment. But its course, this time, is not straight, since in order to travel from anode to cathode it has to pa.s.s through the openings in the part.i.tions, in other words through the mercury.

On arrival at or near the cathode the ions of sodium cause the caustic soda to be formed just as in our experiment, but in this case, you will notice, the formation takes place in a chamber from which the salt brine is completely excluded by the mercury.

Brine is continually fed into the outer chambers and the solution of caustic soda is drawn from the centre one, while the chlorine is collected over the anodes.

And now we can go a step further on our progress from common salt to explosive.

In the soap works there are enormous coppers in which are boiled various kinds of fat. The source of the fat may be either animal or vegetable, many kinds of beans, nuts and seeds furnishing fats practically identical with that which can be got from the fat flesh of a sheep, for instance. To this fat is added some caustic soda solution and the whole is kept boiling for some considerable time. This protracted boiling is to enable the soda thoroughly to attack the fat and combine with it, whereby two entirely new substances are formed.

At first the two new substances are not apparent, for they remain together in one liquid. The addition, however, of some brine causes the change to become obvious for something in the liquid turns solid, so that it can be easily taken away from the rest. That solid is nothing else than soap. It remained dissolved in the water which forms part of the liquid until the salt was put in, but as it will not dissolve in salt water, as you will discover if you attempt to wash in sea water, it separates out as soon as the salt is added.

But still a liquid remains: what can that be? It is mainly salt water and glycerine, that sticky stuff which in peace times we put on our hands if they get sore in winter, or take, in a little water, to soothe a sore throat. That it has other and very different uses was brought home to me when, during the war, I tried to buy some at a chemist's, only to learn that it could not be sold except in cases of extreme need under the orders of a doctor.

The mixed liquid is distilled with the result that the water is driven off and the salt deposited, which with other minor purifying processes gives the pure glycerine.

The next step takes us to the explosives factory, where the glycerine is mixed with sulphuric and nitric acids. Now glycerine, as you will have observed, comes from the animal or vegetable sources and therefore is one of those substances known as "organic," and, like many other of the organic compounds, it consists of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Nature has a marvellous way of combining these same three things together in many various ways to form many widely different substances and if, to such a compound, we can add a little nitrogen, we usually get an explosive. Thus, the glycerine, with some nitrogen from the nitric acid, becomes nitro-glycerine, a most ferocious and excitable explosive, the basis of several of those explosives without which warfare as we know it to-day would be impossible.

CHAPTER II

GUNPOWDER AND ITS MODERN EQUIVALENTS

The origin of gunpowder appears to be lost in antiquity. At all events it has been in use for many centuries and is still made in many countries.

Most boys have tried to make it at some time or other and with varying degrees of success. Such experiments generally lead to a glorious blaze, a delightfully horrid smell and no harm to anyone, the experimenter owing his safety to his invariable lack of complete success, for although other and better explosives have superseded it for many purposes it is capable of doing a lot of harm when it is well made.

It consists of a mixture of charcoal, sulphur and saltpetre ground up very fine and mixed very intimately together. The mixture is wetted and pressed into cakes and dried, after which it is broken up into small pieces. The precise proportions of the various materials seem to vary a great deal in different countries, but generally speaking there is about 75 per cent of saltpetre (or to give it its scientific name, nitrate of potash), 15 per cent of charcoal and 10 per cent of sulphur.