PROFESSOR SHIMOSE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12853, 29 April 1905, Page 6 (Supplement)

PROFESSOR SHIMOSE.

THE MASTER OF EXPLOSIVES. The Japanese shells, torpedoes, and mines all owe much of their exceedingly high explosive power t> the substance used in charging them, the now famous Shimose powder. Before the war the name of its inventor, Professor Shimose, was quite unknown outside Japan, and very little known in Japan itself. His experiments were never pubfished, for it was intended to keep secret as long as possible the fact that the Japanese army and navy possessed this new material. Shimose was born in 1858, and took his final degrees in science at the somewhat fate age of 26 in 1884. He had taken chemistry as his special subject of study, and did much ot his work under Professor Divers, a Scotsman, who then occupied the Chair of Chemistry at the Tokio University. After obtaining liis degree he worked for wine months ill the University laboratories at Tokio, and it was then his attention was first turned to the question of improvements in high explosives. He then entered the Government service, and, after acting for two years as chemist to the Imperial Printing Office, he was transferred to the Navy Department. He introduced several improvements into the process of powder-making in the Government mills, and during the researches connected with this work lie obtained, it is said by a mere, accident in the first instance* the clue, to the new powder of which he had long been thinking. The perfecting of his discovery cost him | ten years of experimental work, some of it- of "a very dangerous character. ' Twice he was badly wounded by ex plosions in his workshop, and one of his hands is to this day partly- crippled as the result of one of these accidents. 1 On another occasion during the trial of the powder a heavy gun burst on the range and sent several of its fragments within a few feet of Shimose, who was watching the fire. (