Nitramon

Armed with a high-powered rifle, a tester for the biggest U. S. explosives company walked a few paces, wheeled, aimed, fired. The bullet zipped into a two-foot cylinder of whitish stuff resembling caked salt. Nothing happened. A 50-lb. trip-hammer crashed down on another cylinder. Nothing happened. A man attacked another piece of the substance with a blowtorch. It simply sizzled. Red-hot irons bored holes in other pieces and still nothing happened. Other lumps were dropped into furnaces. They disintegrated harmlessly. Testers tried in vain to make the stuff explode with blasting caps. But when a stick of it was detonated with a dynamite cartridge, it exploded with satisfactory uproar & violence.

Having repeated and completed these tests over many months in many places, E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. last week announced' development of a powerful new explosive tentatively named nitramon, called it "foolproof," "the ultimate in safety."

Like many another explosive, nitramon contains ammonium nitrate. It also contains a stable carbon compound (formula secret) which only reluctantly releases its carbon to combine with the nitrate's oxygen. Once detonated, however, nitramon explodes with 40% more force than TNT. It costs less than some grades of dynamite. The company claims that it is impervious to cold, works under water, should make quarry blasting and coal vein stripping completely safe up to the moment of "shooting." Politically timely was the assurance that nitramon's value is strictly limited to peacetime use.

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