Saltpeter

Saltpeter PDF Author: David Cressy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019969575X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
The story of the science, the technology, the politics and the military applications of saltpeter - the vital but mysterious substance that governments from the Tudors to the Victorians regarded as an 'inestimable treasure'.

Saltpeter

Saltpeter PDF Author: David Cressy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019969575X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 250

Get Book

Book Description
The story of the science, the technology, the politics and the military applications of saltpeter - the vital but mysterious substance that governments from the Tudors to the Victorians regarded as an 'inestimable treasure'.

Saltpeter

Saltpeter PDF Author: David Cressy
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191611859
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
This is the story of saltpeter, the vital but mysterious substance craved by governments from the Tudors to the Victorians as an 'inestimable treasure.' National security depended on control of this organic material - that had both mystical and mineral properties. Derived from soil enriched with dung and urine, it provided the heart or 'mother' of gunpowder, without which no musket or cannon could be fired. Its acquisition involved alchemical knowledge, exotic technology, intrusions into people's lives, and eventual dominance of the world's oceans. The quest for saltpeter caused widespread 'vexation' in Tudor and Stuart England, as crown agents dug in homes and barns and even churches. Governments hungry for it purchased supplies from overseas merchants, transferred skills from foreign experts, and extended patronage to ingenious schemers, while the hated 'saltpetermen' intruded on private ground. Eventually, huge saltpeter imports from India relieved this social pressure, and by the eighteenth century positioned Britain as a global imperial power; the governments of revolutionary America and ancien régime France, on the other hand, were forced to find alternative sources of this treasured substance. In the end, it was only with the development of chemical explosives in the late Victorian period that dependency on saltpeter finally declined. Saltpeter, the Mother of Gunpowder tells this fascinating story for the first time. Lively and entertaining in its own right, it is also a tale with far-reaching implications. As David Cressy's engaging narrative makes clear, the story of saltpeter is vital not only in explaining the inter-connected military, scientific, and political 'revolutions' of the seventeenth century; it also played a key role in the formation of the centralized British nation state - and that state's subsequent dominance of the waves in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Bulletin

Bulletin PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agricultural chemistry
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Free Frank

Free Frank PDF Author: Juliet E. K. Walker
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 9780813108407
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
The story of Free Frank is not only a testament to human courage and resourcefulness but affords new insight into the American frontier. Born a slave in the South Carolina piedmont in 1777, Frank died a free man in 1854 in a town he had founded in western Illinois. His accomplishments, creditable for any frontiersman, were for a black man extraordinary. Goods and services commanded a premium in the life of the frontier. Free Frank's career shows what an exceptional black man, though working against great odds, could accomplish through industry, acumen, and aggressiveness. His story suggests a great deal about business activity and legal practices, as well as racial conditions, on the frontier. Juliet Walker has performed a task of historical detection in recreating the life of Free Frank from family traditions, limited personal papers, public documents, and secondary sources. In doing so, she has added a significant chapter to the history of Afro-Americans. - Back cover.

The 100 Most Important Chemical Compounds

The 100 Most Important Chemical Compounds PDF Author: Richard L. Myers
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313080577
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
What is a chemical compound? Compounds are substances that are two or more elements combined together chemically in a standard proportion by weight. Compounds are all around us - they include familiar things, such as water, and more esoteric substances, such as triuranium octaoxide, the most commonly occurring natural source for uranium. This reference guide gives us a tour of 100 of the most important, common, unusual, and intriguing compounds known to science. Each entry gives an extensive explanation of the composition, molecular formula, and chemical properties of the compound. In addition, each entry reviews the relevant chemistry, history, and uses of the compound, with discussions of the origin of the compound's name, the discovery or first synthesis of the compound, production statistics, and uses of the compound.

House documents

House documents PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 1270

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Report of the Chief of the Bureau of Animal Industry, United States Department of Agriculture

Report of the Chief of the Bureau of Animal Industry, United States Department of Agriculture PDF Author: United States. Bureau of Animal Industry
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 534

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Annual report of the Bureau of Animal Industry. v. 25, 1908

Annual report of the Bureau of Animal Industry. v. 25, 1908 PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Annual Report of the Bureau of Animal Industry for the Year ...

Annual Report of the Bureau of Animal Industry for the Year ... PDF Author: United States. Bureau of Animal Industry
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Animal industry
Languages : en
Pages : 532

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Annual Report of the Bureau of Animal Industry ...

Annual Report of the Bureau of Animal Industry ... PDF Author: United States. Bureau of Animal Industry
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Animal industry
Languages : en
Pages : 534

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