Worden, Edward Chauncey (1911). Nitrocellulose Industry

A special projector certified to run nitrate films has many modifications, what is billiards among them the chambering of the feed and takeup reels in thick metal covers with small slits to allow the film to run through them. The projector is additionally modified to accommodate several fire extinguishers with nozzles aimed at the film gate. The use of nitrate film and the looming threat of its fiery potential were certainly not issues limited to the realm of motion pictures or to commercial still photography. Disastrous fires related to celluloid or "nitrate film" became regular occurrences in the motion picture industry throughout the silent era and for many years after the arrival of sound film. The use of volatile nitrocellulose film for motion pictures led many cinemas to fireproof their projection rooms with wall coverings made of asbestos. Millions of feet of film burned on March 19 at the Eclair Moving Picture Company in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Then a second fire hit the Edison Company at another location on December 9, at its film-processing complex in West Orange, New Jersey. Projection rooms may also be required to have automatic metal covers for the projection windows, preventing the spread of fire to the auditorium.

Those additions intended to prevent or at least delay the migration of flames beyond the projection areas. For most shots, one can get the cue ball to most anywhere on the table without english or at least with only tiny dashes of english, a quarter-tip here and there. Pool, or at least in straight pool, players score points by shooting the balls into the table’s pockets. The cloth on the table is slow which reduces the pace of the balls. After being a game played outdoors, the billiards experience moved indoors to a wooden table with a simple border around the edges and a green cloth over the table, why? If you’ve stepped into a billiards showroom or even done some online browsing for pool tables, you’ve probably noticed that there are an overwhelming number of felt colors to choose from. UK standard pool tables are 7ft in length, but come in 6ft and 8ft too, (unlike American pool tables, with their standard tournament table size being 9ft). UK pool tables use napped felt, which causes friction and slows down the balls. In 1868, American inventor John Wesley Hyatt developed a plastic material he named Celluloid, improving on Parkes' invention by plasticizing the nitrocellulose with camphor so that it could be processed into a photographic film.

Yet again, on June 13 in Philadelphia, a fire and a series of explosions ignited inside the 186-square-meter (2,000-square-foot) film vault of the Lubin Manufacturing Company and quickly wiped out virtually all of that studio's pre-1914 catalogue. Even after film technology changed, archives of older films remained vulnerable; the 1965 MGM vault fire burned many films that were decades old. Nitrocellulose was used as the first flexible film base, beginning with Eastman Kodak products in August 1889. Camphor is used as a plasticizer for nitrocellulose film, often called nitrate film. Unwashed nitrocellulose (sometimes called pyrocellulose) may spontaneously ignite and explode at room temperature, as the evaporation of water results in the concentration of unreacted acid. The British chemist Frederick Augustus Abel developed the first safe process for guncotton manufacture, which he patented in 1865. The washing and drying times of the nitrocellulose were both extended to 48 hours and repeated eight times over. Further research indicated the importance of washing the acidified cotton.

Because of their fluffy and nearly white appearance, nitrocellulose products are often referred to as cottons, e.g. lacquer cotton, celluloid cotton, and gun cotton. During the first World War, British authorities were slow to introduce grenades, with soldiers at the front improvising by filling ration tin cans with gun cotton, scrap and a basic fuse. Another way to score is by hitting the red ball first and then one cue ball for two points. The acid mixture was changed to two parts sulfuric acid to one part nitric. The method was to immerse one part of fine cotton in 15 parts of an equal blend of sulfuric acid and nitric acid. As a projectile driver, it had around six times the gas generation of an equal volume of black powder and produced less smoke and less heating. In his From the Earth to the Moon, guncotton was used to launch a projectile into space. Guncotton was originally made from cotton (as the source of cellulose) but contemporary methods use highly processed cellulose from wood pulp.