Page:EB1911 - Volume 12.djvu/747

detonator than when dry.^[1] A small charge of dry guncotton will, however, detonate the wet material, and this peculiarity is made use of in the employment of guncotton for blasting purposes. A charge of compressed wet guncotton may be exploded, even under water, by the detonation of a small primer of the dry and waterproofed material, which in turn can be started by a small fulminate detonator. The explosive wave from the dry guncotton primer is in fact better responded to by the wet compressed material than the dry, and its detonation is somewhat sharper than that of the dry. It is not necessary for the blocks of wet guncotton to be actually in contact if they be under water, and the peculiar explosive wave can also be conveyed a little distance by a piece of metal such as a railway rail. The more nearly the composition of guncotton approaches that represented by C₆H₇O₂(NO₃)₃, the more stable is it as regards storing at ordinary temperatures, and the higher the igniting temperature. Carefully prepared guncotton after washing with alcohol-ether until nothing more dissolves may require to be heated to 180-185° C. before inflaming. Ordinary commercial guncottons, containing from 10 to 15% of lower nitrated products, will ignite as a rule some 20-25° lower.

Assuming the above formula to represent guncotton, there is sufficient oxygen for internal combustion without any carbon being left. The gaseous mixture obtained by burning guncotton in a vacuum vessel contains steam, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, nitric oxide, and methane. When slowly heated in a vacuum vessel until ignition takes place, some nitrogen dioxide, NO₂, is also produced. When kept for some weeks at a temperature of 100° in steam, a considerable number of fatty acids, some bases, and glucose-like substances result. Under different pressures the relative amounts of the combustion products vary considerably. Under very great pressures carbon monoxide, steam and nitrogen are the main products, but nitric oxide never quite disappears.

Dilute mineral acids have little or no action on guncotton. Strong sulphuric acid in contact with it liberates first nitric acid and later oxides of nitrogen, leaving a charred residue or a brown solution according to the quantity of acid. It sometimes fires on contact with strong sulphuric acid, especially when slightly warmed. The alkali hydroxides (e.g. sodium hydroxide) will in a solid state fire it on contact. Strong or weak solutions of these substances also decompose it, producing some alkali nitrate and nitrite, the cellulose molecule being only partially restored, some quantity undergoing oxidation. Ammonia is also active, but not quite in the same manner as the alkali hydroxides. Dry guncotton heated in ammonia gas detonates at about 70°, and ammonium hydroxide solutions of all strengths slowly decompose it, yielding somewhat complex products. Alkali sulphohydrates reduce guncotton, or other nitrated celluloses, completely to cellulose. The production of the so-called “artificial silk” depends on this action.

A characteristic difference between guncotton and collodion cotton is the insolubility of the former in ether or alcohol or a mixture of these liquids. The so-called collodion cottons are nitrated celluloses, but of a lower degree of nitration (as a rule) than guncotton. They are sometimes spoken of as “lower” or “soluble” cottons or nitrates. The solubility in ether-alcohol may be owing to a lower degree of nitration, or to the temperature conditions under which the process of manufacture has been carried on. If guncotton be correctly represented by the formula C₆H₇O₂(NO₃)₃, it should contain a little more than 14% of nitrogen. Guncottons are examined for degree of nitration by the nitrometer, in which apparatus they are decomposed by sulphuric acid in contact with mercury, and all the nitrogen is evolved as nitric oxide, NO, which is measured and the weight of its contained nitrogen calculated. Ordinary guncottons seldom contain more than 13% of nitrogen, and in most cases the amount does not exceed 12.5%. Generally speaking, the lower the nitrogen content of a guncotton, as found by the nitrometer, the higher the percentage of matters soluble in a mixture of ether-alcohol. These soluble matters are usually considered as “lower” nitrates.

Guncottons are usually tested by the Abel heat test for stability (see Cordite). Another heat test, that of Will, consists in heating a weighed quantity of the guncotton in a stream of carbon dioxide to 130° C., passing the evolved gases over some red-hot copper, and finally collecting them over a solution of potassium hydroxide which retains the carbon dioxide and allows the nitrogen, arising from the guncotton decomposition, to be measured. This is done at definite time intervals so that the rate of decomposition can be followed. The relative stability is then judged by the amount of nitrogen gas collected in a certain time. Several modifications of this and of the Abel heat test are also in use. (See Explosives.)  (W. R. E. H.) 

GUNDULICH, IVAN (1588–1638), known also as Giovanni Gondola, Servian poet, was born at Ragusa on the 8th of January 1588. His father, Franco Gundulich, once the Ragusan envoy to Constantinople and councillor of the republic, gave him an excellent education. He studied the “humanities” with the Jesuit, Father Muzzi, and philosophy with Father Ricasoli. After that he studied Roman law and jurisprudence in general. He was member of the Lower Council and once served as the chief magistrate of the republic. He died on the 8th of December 1638. A born poet, he admired much the Italian poets of his time, from whom he made many translations into Servian. It is believed that he so translated Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata. He is known to have written eighteen works, of which eleven were dramas, but of these only three have been fully preserved, others having perished during the great earthquake and fire in 1667. Most of those dramas were translations from the Italian, and were played, seemingly with great success, by the amateurs furnished by the noble families of Ragusa. But his greatest and justly celebrated work is an epic, entitled Osman, in twenty cantos. It is the first political epic on the Eastern Question, glorifying the victory of the Poles over Turks and Tatars in the campaign of 1621, and encouraging a league of the Christian nations, under the guidance of Vladislaus, the king of Poland, for the purpose of driving away the Turks from Europe. The fourteenth and fifteenth cantos are lost. It is generally believed that the Ragusan government suppressed them from consideration for the Sultan, the protector of the republic, those two cantos having been violently anti-Turkish.

Osman was printed for the first time in Ragusa in 1826, the two missing cantos being replaced by songs written by Pietro Sorgo (or Sorkochevich). From this edition the learned Italian, Francesco Appendini, made an Italian translation published in 1827. Since that time several other editions have been made. The best are considered to be the edition of the South Slavonic Academy in Agram (1877) and the edition published in Semlin (1889) by Professor Yovan Boshkovich. In the edition of 1844 (Agram) the last cantos, fourteen and fifteen, were replaced by very fine compositions of the Serbo-Croatian poet, Mazhuranich (Mažuranić). The complete works of Gundulich have been published in Agram, 1847, by V. Babukich and by the South Slavonic Academy of Agram in 1889.  (C. Mi.) 

GUNG’L, JOSEF (1810–1889), Hungarian composer and conductor, was born on the 1st of December 1810, at Zsámbék, in Hungary. After starting life as a school-teacher, and learning the elements of music from Ofen, the school-choirmaster, he became first oboist at Graz, and, at twenty-five, bandmaster of the 4th regiment of Austrian artillery. His first composition, a Hungarian march, written in 1836, attracted some notice, and in 1843 he was able to establish an orchestra in Berlin. With this band he travelled far, even (in 1849) to America. It is worth recording that Mendelssohn’s complete Midsummer Night’s Dream music is said to have been first played by Gung’l’s band. In 1853 he became bandmaster to the 23rd Infantry Regiment at Brünn, but in 1864 he lived at Munich, and in 1876 at Frankfort, after (in 1873) having conducted with great success a series of promenade concerts at Covent Garden, London. From Frankfort Gung’l went to Weimar to live with his daughter, a well-known German opera singer and local prima donna. There he died, on the 31st of January 1889. Gung’l’s dances number over 300, perhaps the most popular being the “Amoretten,” “Hydropaten,” “Casino,” “Dreams on the Ocean” waltzes; “In Stiller Mitternacht” polka, and “Blue Violets” mazurka. His Hungarian march was transcribed by Liszt. His music is characterized by the same easy flowing melodies and well-marked rhythm that distinguish the dances of Strauss, to whom alone he can be ranked second in this kind of composition.

GUNNER, or Master Gunner, in the navy, the warrant officer who has charge of the ordnance and ammunition, and of the training of the men at gun drill. His functions in this respect are of less relative importance than they were in former times, when specially trained corps of seamen gunners had not been formed.

GUNNING, PETER (1614–1684), English divine, was born at Hoo, in Kent, and educated at the King’s School, Canterbury, and Clare College, Cambridge, where he became a fellow in 1633. Having taken orders, he advocated the royalist cause from the pulpit with much eloquence. In 1644 he retired to Oxford, and held a chaplaincy at New College until the city surrendered to the parliamentary forces in 1646. Subsequently he was chaplain, first to the royalist Sir Robert Shirley of Eatington (1629–1656), and then at the Exeter House chapel. After the

1. Air-dried guncotton will contain 2% or less of moisture.