Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 265, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 November 1916 — Uncle Sam's Chemists. [ARTICLE]

Uncle Sam's Chemists.

Despite the monumental , work of such government experts as Doctor Rittmann, the discoverer of a new gasoline process; Dr. Harvey Wiley of pure-food fame, and the whole corps engaged in fertilizer experiments, public opinion will not give credit for any good thing to Uncle Sam’s chemists. After making a low-cost record for producing smokeless powder at Pickatinny arsenal and producing “dannite” -—our famous secret “high explosive *D’ ” —the workers in explosives have succeeded in producing a flashless powder. The great heat developed In smokeless powder detonations causes flying particles to become Incandescent, producing a flash, but this new explosive produces only a pear-shaped iridescent flow at the muzzle, invisible at two miles. At night, a mask as high as a mounted man (technically known as “mounted defilade”) will conceal the glow; the “defilade” required at night for our present explosive is not exactly known, but artillery officers have been known to declare, pessimistically, that a mile would be none too high.