Shimose powder
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Shimose powder was a type of gunpowder developed by the Japanese chemist Shimose Masachika (1860-1911). The powder was used by the Imperial Japanese Navy from 1893, and is said to have played an important role in the Japanese victory in the 1905 Russo-Japanese War. The Shimose powder formulation was derived from that of the smokeless powder developed by the French inventor Paul Vielle in 1884.
The powder brought great precision to Japanese gunnery:
"Deftly the Japanese gunners had covered the Japanese advance; now the black powder used in the howitzers shows its inferiority to the Shimose powder of native invention, which, such is its evenness of quality, will with the same length of fuse land shell after shell in the same place in a manner that seems superhuman in its application of theoretical mechanics."
—"With Kuroki in Manchuria", Frederick Palmer.[1]
Shimose powder was also used as the explosive in Japanese torpedoes such as the Type 93.[2]
