I’m grateful to my colleagues Leslie Payne and Greg Woolgar for pointing me in the direction of early attempts at X-raying IEDs in France at the end of the 19th century. Below are some examples of IEDs and x-ray images which seem to be derived from “The Manual of the perfect Anarchist”, a French publication being circulated in anarchist groups at the time.
First device – A booby-trapped box, containing a glass ampoule of sulphuric acid placed in a sugar/potassium chlorate mix. The acid is released when the box lid is opened, because a thread attached to the base of the lid releases the ampoule enclosure somehow (my French language skills are not quite good enough for a clear translation…) Note the presence of shrapnel, which look like hobnails.
2. In the second box a thread on the lid again breaks the sulphuric acids ampoule as it is opened. Note the nails as well as the pins which fasten the wooden box together. Again the main charge is sugar chlorate
Although both these devices contained sugar chlorate mixes, a common explosive used as a main charge at the time was mercury fulminate – not an easy material to make and construct an IED of.