This POD is inspired by the thread
Napoleon's Dynamite.
How would a similar, story play out with pricric acid , also known as 2,4,6-trinitrophenol (TNP) instead of Dynamite?
In OTL Peter Woulfe (1727 – 1803) an Irish chemist and mineralogist, reported in 1779, the formation of a yellow dye when indigo was treated with nitric acid. He was also apparently really into alchemy. Now lets say he used the newly discovered TNP in his alchemical research and discovered that TNP plus lead gets you Lead picrate. Its first historical use was actually as an alternative of fulminate in percussion caps. Now here fulminate is discovered as OTL in 1800. This should give Lead picrate. a little headstart.
Woulfe did publish his findings in OTL/ITL in french which should allow Lavoisier to notice them. Roughly at the same time Antoine Lavoisier was in charge of the French Gunpowder Commission.
He took over this duty in 1775 when he was made one of four commissioners of gunpowder appointed to replace a private company, similar to the Ferme générale. The private venture had proved unsatisfactory in supplying France with its munitions requirements. As a result of his efforts, both the quantity and quality of French gunpowder greatly improved, and it became a source of revenue for the government. His appointment to the Gunpowder Commission brought one great benefit to Lavoisier's scientific career as well. As a commissioner, he enjoyed both a house and a laboratory in the Royal Arsenal. Here he lived and worked between 1775 and 1792.
So this discovery falls in the height of his explosive activity. Now lets say he starts a systematic, well funded picrate salts. He not only finds that most of them are somewhat explosive but that piciric acid itself, under the right circumstances (activated by a first step explosion) explodes itself. The great thing about priric acid is that it is usually pretty inert, without this outside influence. It can also be cheaply mass produced once people find out that you can substitute indigo with phenol. Both the factors made pricric acid a successful dye before it became a weapon.
Now with this stuff out of the way. How would/could play things out?
Source:
All information is taken from wikipeda article (English and German)