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1.
Notes Rec R Soc Lond ; 68(2): 171-86, 2014 Jun 20.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-24921109

ABSTRACT

At the end of November 1914 Lord Moulton (1844-1921) became the director of explosives production in the War Office. A 70-year-old jurist may seem an extraordinary choice, but he was an extraordinary man. He was Senior Wrangler at Cambridge, was elected to the Royal Society for research on electricity, and learned about chemistry as a barrister for dye and explosives manufacturers. He assembled an able team of administrators and chemists who designed and managed mammoth new national explosives factories. They could not make enough TNT and picric acid from obtainable precursors, so Moulton persuaded the reluctant armed services to adopt mixtures of TNT and ammonium nitrate, which enabled them to make even more than was needed. In mid-1915 they moved to the new Ministry of Munitions, where they also became responsible for fertilizers and poison gases. In 1917 they produced explosives at a higher rate than was attained in World War II.


Subject(s)
Explosive Agents/history , Industry/history , England , Explosive Agents/chemistry , History, 20th Century , World War I
3.
Endeavour ; 32(1): 32-7, 2008 Mar.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-18321575

ABSTRACT

Everyone is familiar with fireworks, common to festivals and celebrations across the world. At first glance, the history of science might appear to have little to do with the history of these explosive devices. However, fireworks were an important element of court culture in Europe, which relied on spectacle and festival to manifest the power of princes. From the fifteenth century, courts regularly set off fireworks around elaborate theatrical scenery and ephemeral temples, fascinating audiences with a variety of exotic motions and effects exploding in the night sky. Fireworks also intrigued natural philosophers, and over several centuries there were diverse interactions among the sciences and pyrotechny.


Subject(s)
Chemical Engineering/history , Explosions/history , Explosive Agents/history , Fires/history , Holidays/history , Equipment Design , Europe , History, 15th Century , History, 16th Century , History, 17th Century , History, 18th Century , History, 19th Century , History, 20th Century , Humans
5.
Br J Cancer ; 95(1): 102-6, 2006 Jul 03.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-16755299

ABSTRACT

Much evidence has accumulated that childhood leukaemia (CL) is a rare response to a common, but unidentified, infection and in particular that situations involving the unusual mixing of urban and rural groups (approximating to, respectively, groups infected with, and susceptible to, the relevant microorganism) can produce localised epidemics with consequent increases of the infrequent leukaemic complication. During the Second World War, explosives production factories were built and operated at Drigg and Sellafield, and a shell filling factory at Bootle, in west Cumbria, England, requiring substantial numbers of construction workers to be brought into this remote and isolated area. Following the design of an earlier study of CL near large (post-war) rural construction sites, mortality from this disease was investigated with the help of the Office of National Statistics, in the area around these Cumbrian factories where local workers largely lived, during the construction period and with particular reference to the overlapping construction and operational phase when the mixing of local and migrant workers would have been greatest. An excess of leukaemia deaths at ages 1-14 was found during the construction period (observed 3; observed/expected (O/E) 2.2, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.6, 6.0), which was more marked and statistically significant during the overlap with operations (O 3; O/E 4.5, 95% CI: 1.1, 12.2), especially at ages 1-4 (O 2; O/E 7.1, CI: 1.2, 23.6). A previous investigation did not detect this excess because it considered only a small part of west Cumbria that omitted the communities where most of the workforce lived, having incorrectly attributed the post-war expansion of the village of Seascale (situated between Drigg and Sellafield) to the wartime ordnance factories. The present findings are consistent with the results of the earlier study of rural construction projects and with the general evidence that marked rural-urban population mixing increases the risk of CL.


Subject(s)
Chemical Industry/history , Explosive Agents/history , Leukemia/history , Occupational Diseases/history , Occupational Exposure/history , Adolescent , Child , Child, Preschool , England/epidemiology , History, 20th Century , Humans , Infant , Leukemia/epidemiology , Occupational Diseases/epidemiology , Risk Factors , World War II
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