Explosives

Correspondence, patents, publications, notes, production plans, proposals, memos, reports, and data belonging to the Commercial Solvents Corporation (CSC), as well as the personal files of Richard S. Egly, CSC’s Associate Scientific Director, and Emory E. Toops, Jr., a physical chemist in CSC’s Technical Development Department. The collection deals with the production of nitroparaffins and nitroparaffin derivatives, an area in which Commercial Solvents Corporation was preeminent.

This collection is mainly a research collection with much of its content being devoted to the field of military ordnance, explosives and pyrotechnics, but in his capacity as Director of Research for the Trojan Powder Company, Snelling maintained files on many different aspects of industrial chemistry.

Print photographs and scrapbook pages documenting the Commercial Solvents Corporation's nitroparaffin plant, explosions, tests for shipping nitromethane, and portraits of CSC employee Richard S. Egly.