ve made smokeless powder a success--a smokeless powder
made substantially of a character such as I have herein described. With
smokeless powder, the French rifle imparts a muzzle velocity of 2,000
feet per second to the bullet, with a range of about 2,400 meters.

If smokeless powder be divided into sufficiently small grains to be
ignited by an ordinary fulminating cap, it would burn too quickly,
thereby causing the pressure to mount too high, and without giving the
desired velocity. Consequently very large and strong fulminating caps
have to be employed. Smokeless powder is not ignited in the same manner
as black powder. Something besides ignition is necessary. Black powder
simply requires to be set on fire; while a smokeless powder, on the
contrary, not only requires that it be set on fire, but that a certain
degree of pressure be set up inside of the cartridge case. For instance,
if a primer of a certain size should be found to operate perfectly well,
giving prompt ignition in the cartridge case of a rifle of small
caliber, it would be found that the same primer would not ignite a
charge of the same powder if loaded into a gun of one inch caliber. In
the latter case a few grains only lying near the primer would be
ignited, and these would soon become extinguished by sudden release of
pressure bringing about a cooling effect due to expansion of the gases.
In small cartridges a large fulminating cap is all that is required, but
in large cartridges it is necessary to resort to additional means of
ignition.

In France, where experiments were conducted with a 37 millimeter Maxim
gun, it was found to be impracticable to use a fulminating cap
sufficiently large to ignite the powder and cause it to burn. Therefore,
a small ignition charge of black powder was employed, it being put in a
capsule or bag and placed next the primer. On firing at the rate of 300
rounds per minute, the black powder, though small in quantity, produced
a cloud of smoke through which it was quite impossible to see. The
inventor of the gun then prepared for the French some wafers of
pyroxyline canvas, which were placed next to the primer, securing
thereby prompt ignition without the production of any smoke.

Smokeless powder, made as I have described, cannot be detonated by a
fulminating cap of any size or by any means whatever. A large charge of
fulminate of mercury placed inside the cartridge case next the primer
will not detonate the powder, it se