9/9/2023 0 Comments Edison township public works![]() Some 300 feet (91 m) from the Works' nitrocellulose buildings sat a storage house leased to the Ammonite Company, which used the building to salvage the contents of artillery shells for use as agricultural fertilizer. Finished cellulose nitrate was piled in 50-by-20-inch (127 by 51 cm) sheets in surrounding buildings. The company manufactured cellulose nitrate (also known as nitrocellulose, guncotton, and several other names), a highly flammable material that was the first man-made plastic. When the war ended, its facilities were put to broader uses, involving other explosive materials. It was created in 1915 by naval architect and industrialist Lewis Nixon to supply some European nations with gunpowder and other materials for World War I. ![]() The Nixon Nitration Works, which included a number of plants, covered about 12 square miles (3,100 ha) on the Raritan River, near New Brunswick, in what was then officially known as Raritan Township (later changed to Edison) and unofficially known as Nixon, New Jersey. The disaster killed twenty people, destroyed forty buildings, and demolished the "tiny industrial town of Nixon, New Jersey." The setting The explosion touched off fires in surrounding buildings in the Nixon Nitration Works that contained other highly flammable materials. It began on March 1, 1924, about 11:15 a.m., when an explosion destroyed a building in Nixon, New Jersey (an area within present-day Edison, New Jersey) used for processing ammonium nitrate. The 1924 Nixon Nitration Works disaster was an explosion and fire that claimed many lives and destroyed several square miles of New Jersey factories.
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