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More than 2.75 million pounds of first-quality gunpowder (a majority of the powder used by the Confederacy) were produced before its closure in 1865. [5] By comparison, Union gunpowder manufacture was distributed among many mills, with the larger Hazard Powder Company of Connecticut producing 40% of the annual production of 8.4 million pounds. [6]
Demand for gunpowder declined when the civil war ended, but picked up briefly during the Franco-Prussian War [12] and Russo-Turkish War. [8] Oriental Powder Company was ranked 4th (after DuPont, Laflin & Rand, and Hazard) among the six companies of the United States Gunpowder Trade Association popularly known as the powder trust. [13]
A saltpetre works or nitrary [1] is a place of production of potassium nitrate or saltpetre used primarily for the manufacture of gunpowder. The saltpeter occurs naturally in certain places like the "Caves of Salnitre" ( Collbató ) known since the Neolithic.
Gunpowder is very easily ignited by static electricity or lightning strikes, and most powder mills experienced occasional accidental explosions. Powder mill explosions typically destroyed an entire building and killed those working in the vicinity of the building. Explosions might throw flaming debris which could ignite other buildings.
One of the oldest and most intact mill villages in the U.S. state of Maryland, Jerusalem is located in Harford County, along the Little Gunpowder Falls River. It also serves as the headquarters of the Gunpowder Falls State Park. [2] The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places on August 20, 1987. [1]
Faversham, in Kent, England, has claims to be the cradle of the UK's explosives industry: it was also to become one of its main centres.The first gunpowder plant in the UK was established in the 16th century, possibly at the instigation of the abbey at Faversham.
The Frankford Powder-Mill is a historic gunpowder factory in the Frankford neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At the time it was built in 1774 by Oswald Eve, it was the only such mill in the American colonies. Other powder mills operated in the 17th and 18th centuries but stopped production after the French and Indian war.
A 1682 demonstration of Huygens gunpowder engine, where a dram of gunpowder creates enough vacuum to lift 8 boys into the air. Huygens, however, became interested in the mechanical power of the vacuum, and the possibility of using gunpowder to produce one. In 1678 he outlined a gunpowder engine consisting of a vertical tube containing a piston ...