Dear Rick,
Good point regarding Bickfords important Safety Fuse invention.
Also to be considered on this vein are detonators. Numerous initiating
compounds were experimented with, but Lead Azide was the 'main' one in the
end. They did experiment with Nitrogen Tri Iodide, but it has a nasty habit
of being very extremely sensitive to shock! - bumps more like - and was
scrapped (this sensible act probably saved countless lives!!!
I found numeous old Azide detonators on one of the dumps at Nant-y-Cagal
about 20 years ago. It was clearly a round that had not fired properly and
most likely had to be redrilled - in part at least. Strangely no other
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