Who discovered dynamite and where? Dynamite - Alfred Nobel's hellish invention

Alfred Bernhard Nobel was a Swedish chemist, engineer, innovator and weapons manufacturer.

Nobel's most important invention was the creation of dynamite.

He also owned the Swedish metallurgical concern Bofors Arms Company, which was a major manufacturer of guns and other weapons. Nobel's multiple inventions were registered in the development and application of 350 different patents. He bequeathed his successful arms business and acquired property posthumously to the Nobel Prize Institute. Additionally, the synthetic element Nobelium was named after him. His name also survives in today's vast international industrial empires, such as the German firm Dynamit Nobel and the Dutch-Swedish group Akzo Nobel.

Life and career

Alfred Nobel was born in Stockholm, the fourth son of an inventor and engineer. The family was poor, and only Alfred and his three brothers survived their childhood. Since childhood, the boy was interested in mechanical engineering, explosives, and studying the basic principles of mechanics, physics, and chemistry at a young age. Alfred Nobel inherited his interest in technology from his father, a graduate of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

After various business failures, Nobel's father moved to St. Petersburg in 1837 and in 1842 the family and the future inventor of dynamite joined him in the city. Now the parents of an already prosperous family were able to send the future inventor to private tutors and the boy excelled in his studies, especially in the field of chemistry and languages, achieving fluency in English, French, German and Russian. As a young man, he studied with the famous Russian organic chemist Nikolai Zinin, and then, in 1850, went to Paris for further work. At age 18, he went to the United States for four years to study chemistry, collaborating for a short period with the Swedish-American inventor and mechanical engineer John Ericsson who was developing warships.

Future inventor Nobel filed his first patent in 1857.

The family factory produced weapons for Crimean War(1853 - 1856) but when fighting They ended up filing for bankruptcy. In 1859, Nobel's father left his factory to his second son, Ludwig (1831-1888), who greatly improved the business. His entire family and parents returned to Sweden from Russia and the future founder of the Nobel Prize began studying explosives. Due to the special danger of the substances, the manufacture and use of nitroglycerin (discovered in 1847 by Ascanio Sobrero, one of his fellow students at the University of Paris) was special. Nobel invented the detonator in 1863 and the fuse in 1865.

On September 3, 1864, a room used to prepare nitroglycerin exploded at a factory in Stockholm, killing five people, including his younger brother. Nobel continued to build further factories with an emphasis on improving the stability of the explosives he was developing.

Nobel's main invention, dynamite, was registered in 1867.

The substance is easier and safer to handle than the more unstable nitroglycerin. Dynamite has been patented in the US and UK and is widely used in mining and transport construction internationally.

In 1875, Nobel's invention was gelignite, a more stable and powerful substance than dynamite, and in 1887 he patented ballistic smokeless gunpowder.

Inventor Nobel was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1884, which would later select laureates for Nobel Prizes. The future founder received an honorary doctorate from Uppsala University in 1893.

Brothers Ludwig and Robert, thanks to exploited oil fields along the Caspian Sea, became extremely wealthy in their own right. The inventor of dynamite invested his accumulated wealth by developing these new oil regions.

During his lifetime, Nobel registered 350 patents internationally and created 90 weapons factories, despite his belief in pacifism.

In 1888, the death of his brother Ludwig changed his attitude towards wealth. The newspaper erroneously published an obituary that dynamite inventor Alfred "the merchant of death is dead." After reading his own obituary and evaluating his activities, the inventor created a fund that will be given to those who have brought the greatest benefit to people.

In 1891, after the death of his mother and his brother Ludwig, Nobel moved from Paris to San Remo, Italy. Suffering from a sore throat, Nobel died at home from a hemorrhage in 1896. Having no family, he left most of his wealth in trust management, in order to fund awards that became known as the Nobel Prize.

Nobel's inventions and discoveries

Nobel's discovery was that when nitroglycerin is combined with an absorbent inert substance like diatomaceous earth (rock) it becomes safer and more easily processed, a mixture he patented in 1867 as "dynamite." The inventor demonstrated his explosive for the first time in his career in Surrey, England. In order to improve the image of his business from the controversy associated with dangerous explosives, the scientist lived for some time next to dynamite.

Later, the inventor, in combination with various nitrocellulose compounds, settled on more effective recipe and received a transparent jelly, which was a more powerful explosive than dynamite. "Gelignite" or explosive gelatin, as it was called, was patented in 1876 and thereafter there were many similar combinations, variations and additions of potassium nitrate and various other substances.

Gelignite was a more stable, transportable and convenient format to fit into drilling and mining holes than previously used compounds and was adopted as the standard technology for mining in the age of engineering. This brought a large amount of financial success in the form of money. Research led to the development of ballistic agents, the forerunner of many modern smokeless explosives still used as fuel today.

Nobel Prize

In 1888, the scientist's brother Ludwig died while visiting Cannes and a French newspaper mistakenly published an obituary for Alfred. The newspaper condemned him for inventing dynamite and he decided to leave his best legacy after his death as the Nobel Prize.

On November 27, 1895, while visiting the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris, Nobel signed his last will and testament, in which he set aside the bulk of his property for the creation of the Nobel Prizes, awarded annually without distinction of nationality.

After taxes, the bequest was allocated 94% of his total assets in the amount of SEK 31,225,000 to establish five Nobel Prizes. This converted to $250,000,000 ($250 million) at the time.

The annual Nobel Prize is worth just over $1 million.

A total of five awards: The first three of these prizes are awarded for services to physical science, chemistry and medicine or physiology, the fourth literary work and the fifth prize is given to the individual or community who renders the greatest service to the cause of international brotherhood, in suppressing or reducing armies, institutions, or achieving peace.

In his will, the founder stipulates that the money will go towards discoveries or inventions in the natural sciences and discoveries or improvements in chemistry. He opened the door to technological solutions, but left no instructions on how to interpret the differences between science and technology.

Because scientific bodies make decisions, prizes go to scientists more often than to engineers, technicians and other inventors.

Since 1996, the Bank of Sweden has included a prize in economics named after Alfred Nobel, although there was nothing about economists in the founder's will.

In 2001, a great-nephew, Peter Nobel (b. 1931), asked the Bank of Sweden to differentiate the award for economists. The request adds to the controversy over whether the Bank of Sweden should name prizes in economic sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel and call them "Nobel Prizes."

The invention of dynamite was outstanding.

Alfred Nobel - inventor of dynamite

Alfred Bernhard Nobel was born on October 21, 1833 in Stockholm and became the fourth child in the family of Swedish entrepreneur and inventor Emmanuel Nobel. Alfred was born very weak and was constantly sick as a child. He developed a very warm relationship with his mother, which remained so until the end of her life: he often visited his mother and maintained a lively correspondence with her.

Having failed in an attempt to organize his own business producing elastic fabric, the father was forced to look for funds to support his family, and in 1837, leaving his wife and children in Sweden, he went first to Finland, and from there to St. Petersburg, where he was actively involved in production mines charged with powder explosive compositions, lathes and machine accessories. When Alfred was 9 years old, in October 1842, the whole family moved to his father in Russia. The Nobels' increased financial capabilities, thanks to their father, made it possible to hire a private tutor for the boy. Alfred showed himself to be a hardworking, capable student with a thirst for knowledge; he was especially interested in chemistry and physics.

In 1850, seventeen-year-old Alfred went on a long trip to Europe, during which he visited Germany, France, and then the United States of America. In Paris, he continued to study chemistry, and in the USA he met John Ericsson, the famous Swedish inventor of the steam engine, whose communication with him made an indelible impression on the young Nobel.

Soon, returning from a trip abroad to St. Petersburg, Alfred began working in his father’s booming company, which specialized in the production of ammunition for the Crimean War (1853–1856), and at the end of the war was repurposed to produce machines and parts for steamships under construction. However, orders for peacetime products could not cover the gap in War Department orders, and by 1858 the company began to experience a financial crisis. Alfred and his parents returned to Stockholm, while the older brothers Robert and Ludwig remained in Russia with the aim of liquidating the business and saving at least part of the invested funds. In Sweden, Alfred devoted all his time to mechanical and chemical experiments, receiving three patents for inventions, which supported his subsequent interest in experiments in a small laboratory equipped by his father on the family estate near the capital.

At that time, the only explosive for mines was black powder. But it was also known that nitroglycerin in solid form is an extremely powerful explosive, the use of which, due to its volatility, is associated with exceptional risk. No one has been able to determine how to control its detonation. After conducting several short experiments with nitroglycerin, his father sent Alfred to Paris to find a source of funding for research (1861), and he successfully completed the task, receiving a loan in the amount of 100 thousand francs. But, despite the entreaties of Nobel Sr., Alfred refused to participate in this project. In 1863, he personally invented a practical detonator that used gunpowder to explode nitroglycerin. It was this invention that brought him not only fame, but also prosperity and prosperity.

To enhance the effectiveness of this device, Nobel repeatedly changed individual parts of the design, and as a final improvement in 1865, he replaced the wooden case that contained the gunpowder charge with a metal capsule filled with detonating mercury. The invention of this so-called exploding capsule introduced the principle of initial ignition into explosion technology, which became a fundamental phenomenon for all subsequent work in this direction.

However, in the process of improving the invention, Emmanuel Nobel's laboratory suffered from a severe explosion. He took eight human lives, including Emmanuel’s 21-year-old son, Emil. Soon after the tragedy, my father suffered from paralysis, and he spent the remaining eight years before his death in 1872 in an immobile state.

Despite emerging public hostility towards the production and use of nitroglycerin, in October 1864 Nobel persuaded the board of the Swedish State Railways to accept the explosive he had developed for tunneling. For its production, he achieved financial support from Swedish businessmen: the company Nitroglycerin LTD was established and a plant was opened. During the early years of the company's existence, Nobel was simultaneously its managing director, technologist, head of the advertising bureau, head of the office and treasurer, and also organized frequent road demonstrations of his products. Among the buyers of the innovation, in particular, was the Central Pacific Railroad (in the American West), which used it to lay railroad tracks through the Sierra Nevada mountains. Having received a patent for his invention in other countries, Nobel founded the first of his foreign companies, Alfred Nobel & Co., in 1865 in Hamburg.

But although Nobel was able to resolve major industrial safety issues, careless buyers in handling explosives sometimes resulted in accidental explosions resulting in fatalities, leading to some bans on the import of dangerous products. However, Nobel continued to expand his business. In 1866, he received a patent in the United States and spent three months there demonstrating his "exploding oil" and raising funds for the Hamburg enterprise. Nobel decides to found an American company - the future Atlantic Giant Roader Co. (after Nobel's death it was acquired by Dupont de Nemours and Co.).

Given that his explosives were so often responsible for accidents (although, when used correctly, they were effective blasting materials), Nobel was constantly looking for ways to stabilize nitroglycerin. Suddenly he was struck by the idea of ​​mixing liquid nitroglycerin with a chemically inert porous substance. Nobel's first practical steps in this direction were the use of kieselguhr (as geologists call porous sedimentary rock consisting of the silicon skeletons of seaweed - diatoms) as an absorbent material. He called this mixture dynamite (from the Greek word “dynamis” - “power”). Mixed with nitroglycerin, such materials could be shaped into sticks and inserted into drilled holes. Thus, in 1868, a new explosive material was patented, which became known as “dynamite, or Nobel’s safe explosive powder.”

This "safe" explosive powder has enabled such exciting projects as the Alpine Tunnel at St. Gotthard railway, removal of underwater rocks in Hell Gate located in the East River (New York), clearing the Danube bed in the area Iron Gate or the construction of the Corinth Canal in Greece. With the help of dynamite, drilling work was also carried out in the Baku oil fields (and the latter enterprise is famous for the fact that the two Nobel brothers, known for their activity and businesslikeness, became so rich that they were called only “Russian Rockefellers”).

In life, Nobel was a completely unpretentious person. He trusted few people with his thoughts. Even among his friends, he was only an attentive listener, equally polite and delicate with everyone. The dinners he hosted, whether at home or in one of the fashionable districts of Paris, were lively, festive and at the same time elegant: he was a hospitable host and an interesting conversationalist, capable of inviting any guest into an entertaining dialogue. In certain circumstances, Nobel could even use his wit, honed to the point of causticity. His famous phrase is “All French are in the happy confidence that mental abilities are an exclusively French property.”

Nobel was a slender man of average height, dark hair, with dark blue eyes and a beard. According to the fashion of the time, he wore pince-nez on a black cord.

He was not in good health, sometimes he was capricious, secluded, and was in a depressed mood. After hard work, he often found it difficult to relax. Nobel often traveled and visited various resorts with mineral springs, which was a popular and fashionable way of healing at that time.

Despite his poor health, the inventor was able to throw himself into exhausting work. Possessing an excellent research mind, he loved to work in his laboratory. Nobel managed his industrial empire scattered around the world with the help of a whole “team” of directors of numerous companies in which he had a 20-30 percent share of capital. As a responsible and scrupulous person, he always personally reviewed the details of major decisions made by companies that used his name in their name.

This ten-year cycle of Nobel’s life can be said to be “restless and nerve-wracking.” After moving from Hamburg to Paris in 1873, Nobel could sometimes retire to his personal laboratory, which occupied part of his house, where, to assist in scientific work he attracted Georges D. Fehrenbach, a young French chemist who worked with him for 18 years.

At the beginning of 1876, intending to hire a housekeeper and part-time personal secretary, Nobel advertised in one of the Austrian newspapers: “A wealthy and highly educated elderly gentleman living in Paris expresses a desire to hire a person of mature age with linguistic training to work as a secretary and housekeepers." Among those who responded to the ad was 33-year-old Bertha Kinski, who was working as a governess in Vienna at the time. She came to Paris for an interview and made a great impression on Nobel with her appearance and speed of translation. However, just a week later, homesickness called her back to Vienna, where she married the son of her former mistress, Baron Arthur von Suttner. However, Alfred and Bertha were destined to meet again, and for the last 10 years of his life they corresponded, discussing, in particular, projects for strengthening peace on Earth. By the way, Bertha von Suttner became one of the leading ideals in the struggle for peace on the European continent (which was greatly facilitated by the financial support of the movement by Nobel), and was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1905.

Although Alfred Nobel had patent rights to dynamite and other materials, he was constantly haunted by competitors who stole his technological secrets. He refused to hire a full-time secretary or legal adviser, so he was forced to spend a lot of time himself litigation for violation of his patent rights.

In the 1870s–1880s, Nobel expanded the network of his enterprises in the main European countries, establishing a global chain of enterprises within national corporations. For the purpose of producing and trading explosives, he added a new explosive to the improved dynamite. The military use of these substances began with the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, but throughout his entire life, the study of explosive materials for military purposes was an unprofitable enterprise for Nobel, and he benefited precisely from the use of dynamite in the construction of tunnels, canals, and railways. and highways.

But his companies required priority attention, since to meet the ever-increasing demand for explosives it was necessary to build new factories (in 1896, the year of Nobel’s death, there were 93 enterprises remaining, producing about 66,500 thousand tons of explosives, including all its varieties, such as shell charges and smokeless powder (ballistite), patented by Nobel between 1887 and 1891, the new explosive could replace black powder and was relatively inexpensive to produce.

When organizing a market for smokeless powder, Nobel sold his patent to the Italian government, which led to a conflict with the French government, which accused him of stealing the explosive and deprived him of his monopoly on it. Nobel's laboratory was searched and closed; the company was also prohibited from producing ballistite. After this, in 1891, Nobel left France and founded his new residence in San Remo, located in the Italian Riviera, where he tried to recover from the last two tragic events in personal life: His older brother Ludwig died in 1888, and the following year he lost his mother.

In San Remo, in his villa overlooking the Mediterranean Sea and surrounded by orange trees, Nobel built a small chemical laboratory, where, among other things, he experimented in the production of synthetic rubber and rayon. Nobel loved San Remo, but also had fond memories of native land. In 1894, having bought an ironworks in Värmland, he built an estate and acquired a new laboratory.

For the last five years of his life, Nobel worked with a personal assistant, as well as a secretary and laboratory assistant, Ragnar Solman, a young Swedish chemist distinguished by extreme patience and tact. The young man managed to please Nobel and win his trust so much that he called him nothing more than “the main executor of my desires.” “It wasn't always easy to serve as his assistant,” Solman recalled. “He was demanding in his requests, frank and always seemed impatient. Anyone who had anything to do with him had to shake himself up properly in order to keep up with the leaps of his thoughts and be prepared for his most amazing whims, when he suddenly appeared and disappeared just as quickly.”

Nobel often showed extraordinary generosity towards his employees. When his assistant Solman was getting ready to get married, Nobel immediately doubled his salary, and when his French cook got married, he gave her a huge sum for those times - 40 thousand francs. However, his philanthropy was often independent of personal and professional connections. Thus, not being a zealous parishioner, he often donated money to the activities of the Paris branch of the Swedish Church in France (its pastor in the early 90s of the last century was Nathan Söderblum, who later became the Archbishop of the Lutheran Church in Sweden and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1930) .

In 1896, at a consultation with specialists in Paris, Nobel was warned about the development of angina pectoris, associated with insufficient oxygen supply to the heart muscle. He was advised to go on vacation, and the inventor moved again to San Remo. On December 10, 1896, Alfred Nobel died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Apart from the Italian servants who did not understand him, at that moment no one close to him was near him.

Nobel's contemporaries believed that he did not live up to the image of a successful capitalist in the era of rapid industrial development of the 2nd half of the 19th century century, because he gravitated towards solitude and peace, and did not like the bustle of the city. Compared to many glamorous tycoons, Nobel most likely looked like an ascetic, since he never smoked, did not drink alcohol, avoided cards and other gambling. He could be called a cosmopolitan of the European persuasion, speaking well in French, German, Russian and English languages. Since childhood, keen on reading serious, outstanding books, Nobel created the largest library where one could get acquainted with the works of such authors as the English philosopher, a supporter of the introduction of Darwin’s theory of evolution into laws human development Herbert Spencer and others.

Among his younger companions, he was known as an ardent supporter of liberal social views. Some of his contemporaries believed that he was a socialist, although in reality this was completely wrong. He was an economic and political conservative who opposed women's suffrage and expressed serious doubts about the benefits of democracy. However, few people believed so sincerely in the political wisdom of the masses and so deeply despised despotism. Hiring hundreds of workers, Nobel literally took care of their health and well-being in a fatherly manner, without, however, entering into personal contact with anyone. Innate insight and keen observation helped him to come to the conclusion that a labor force with higher moral qualities was more productive than simply the brutally exploited masses.

The most prestigious prize in the world (about $1 million) bears Nobel’s name, approved four years after the writing of his will, according to which his entire capital was to go into a fund for the annual awarding of “...cash prizes to those individuals who, during the previous year, have managed to bring the greatest benefit to humanity. Prize fund shall be divided into five equal parts, awarded as follows: one part - to the person who commits the most important discovery or invention in the field of physics; the second part - to the person who will achieve the most important improvement or make a discovery in the field of chemistry; the third part - to the person who makes the most important discovery in the field of physiology or medicine; the fourth part - to the person who will create in the field of literature outstanding work idealistic orientation; and, finally, the fifth part - to the person who will make the greatest contribution to strengthening the commonwealth of nations, to eliminating or reducing the tension of confrontation between armed forces, as well as to organizing or facilitating the holding of congresses of peace forces.”

Nobel was often called the “king of dynamite,” but he always spoke out against the use of his discoveries for military purposes. “For my part,” he said in last years life, - I wish that all the guns with all their accessories and servants could be sent to hell, that is, to the most appropriate place for them, so that they could be displayed and not used.” He also stated that war is “the horror of horrors and the most terrible crime,” and admitted: “I would like to invent a substance or machine with such destructive power that any war would become impossible.”

Meaning:

Alfred Nobel invented dynamite, gelignite, and then ballistite (smokeless gunpowder). The products of his factories quickly conquered the international market and brought in huge profits.

In total, Nobel owns more than 300 patents (among them patents for a water meter, a barometer, a refrigeration apparatus, a gas burner, an improved method for producing sulfuric acid, and much more).

The inventor was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society of London, the Paris Society of Civil Engineers, and had many awards.

His name is inextricably linked with the Nobel Prize, awarded annually to a person or organization that has made significant contributions to human rights, arms control and conflict prevention around the world, or has made outstanding discoveries. Anyone can become a laureate of the award, regardless of nationality.

Worked on the invention of artificial leather and silk.

The synthesized chemical element Nobelium is named in his honor, as is the Nobel Institute of Physics and Chemistry in Stockholm.

What they said about him:

“A man of difficult fate, deprived of the joys of reciprocal love and family life, Alfred Nobel devoted his life to tireless work. IN XIX century he was one of the richest industrialists in Europe. And he disposed of his colossal inheritance in such a way that today his money works for the development of science, economics and peacekeeping activities. Alfred Nobel is the founder of the most prestigious, most authoritative Nobel Prize."(Nikolai Nadezhdin).

“Alfred Nobel, Swedish experimental chemist and businessman, inventor of dynamite and other explosives, who wished to found charitable foundation to be awarded a prize in his name, which brought him posthumous fame, he was distinguished by incredible contradictions and paradoxical behavior... Nobel gravitated towards solitude, peace, could not tolerate the bustle of the city, although he had to live most of his life in urban conditions, and he also traveled quite often »(Alden Whitman).

“Nobel's interests were extremely diverse. He studied electrochemistry and optics, biology and medicine, designed automatic brakes and safe steam boilers, tried to make artificial rubber and leather, studied nitrocellulose and rayon, and worked on producing light alloys. Of course, he was one of the most educated people of his time."(V.P. Lishevsky).

What did he say:

"I count life an extraordinary gift, precious stone, received by us from the hands of Mother Nature so that we ourselves grind and polish it until its brilliance rewards us for our labors.”

“There are two things I never borrow or borrow: money and plans.”

“A good reputation is more important than a clean shirt. A shirt can be washed, but a reputation can never be washed.”

“People who care only about obtaining the maximum benefit hardly deserve respect, and the consciousness of the true motives of their activities can darken the joy of human communication.”

“Any invention and discovery leaves an indelible mark in people’s minds, and this allows us to hope that in the generations that come to replace us, there will be more of those who are able to change culture, make it better and more perfect.”