[1] At the end of the Crimean War, just before taking his first degree, he passed for a direct commission in the Royal Artillery, in which he was appointed lieutenant on 6 March 1856.

[1] In June 1877 he was sent to India as member and acting secretary of a special committee appointed by the Marquis of Salisbury to report on the reorganisation of the ordnance department of the Indian Army and its manufacturing establishments in the three presidencies.

[1] In 1880 he was posted to a field battery at Woolwich; in April 1881 became a member of the ordnance committee, and in July 1885 was appointed superintendent of Waltham Abbey Royal Gunpowder Factory.

On reaching his fifty-fifth birthday in October 1889 he was retired under the age clause of the royal warrant with the rank of major-general, but as it was found that his experience and qualifications could not be spared, he was restored to the active list in 1890, and continued at Waltham.

Very large quantities of prismatic gunpowder (E. X. E. and S. B. C.) were manufactured at Waltham Abbey or by private contract from his discoveries, which, by permission of the War Office, were protected by a patent granted to him in 1886.