ABSTRACT
The first nitrated carbohydrate was apparently prepared in the early 1830s by Henri Braconnot (1780-1855), the director of the Botanical Garden in Nancy, France.1 By dissolving plant material in nitric acid, Braconnot found that the resulting precipitation products, which he termed ‘xyloidine’, were readily inflammable, burned violently, and left little or no residue. One modern estimate of the nitrogen content of xyloidine is 5-6%.2 The further study of xyloidine led the French chemist Théophile Jules Pelouze (1807-1867) to prepare nitrocellulose by saturating paper with nitric acid, though he may not have been aware of exactly what substance he had prepared.3 Asimov relates a much more flamboyant – and perhaps apocryphal – genesis of nitrocellulose. In 1845 the German-Swiss chemist Christian Friedrich Schönbein (1799-1868) spilled some nitric acid in the kitchen even though his wife had expressly forbidden him to do experiments there. He quickly wiped up the spill with his wife’s cotton apron, which, after drying behind the stove, blew up.4
