The History of Nitroglycerine

The History of Nitroglycerine

Alfred Nobel was born in Stockholm on October 21, 1833. By the age of 17 he was fluent in Swedish, Russian, French, English and German. Early in his life he had a huge interest in English literature and poetry as well as in chemistry and physics. Alfred's father disliked his interest in poetry and found his son rather introverted. In order to widen Alfred's horizons his father sent him to different institutions for further training in chemical engineering. During a two-year period he visited Sweden, Germany, France and the United States. He came to enjoy Paris the best. There he worked in the private laboratory of Professor T. J. Pelouze, a famous chemist. He also met the young Italian chemist Ascanio Sobrero who, three years earlier, had invented nitroglycerine.

Now nitroglycerine was considered too dangerous to be of any practical use. Although its explosive power greatly exceeded that of gunpowder, the liquid would explode in a very unpredictable manner if subjected to heat and pressure. Alfred Nobel became very interested in nitroglycerine and how it could be put to practical use in construction work. He also realized that the safety problems had to be solved and a method had to be developed for the controlled detonation of nitroglycerine.

Together with his father he performed experiments to develop nitroglycerine as a commercially and technically useful explosive. They did have a few accidents where several explosions did happen, including one in which his brother Emil and several other persons were killed. This convinced the authorities of the city that nitroglycerine production was just too dangerous. So they forbade further experimentation with nitroglycerine in the Stockholm city limits and he had to move his experimentation to a barge anchored on a lake. But of course Alfred was not discouraged and in 1864 he was able to start mass production of nitroglycerine. To make the handling of nitroglycerine safer he experimented with different additives. He soon found that mixing nitroglycerine with silica would turn the liquid into a paste, which could be shaped into rods, which could be dropped into drilled holes in rocks. In 1867 he patented this material under the name of dynamite. By the time of his death in 1896 he had 355 patents.

In 1934 the American scientist Harold Clayton Urey won the Nobel Prize for chemistry for his discovery of the heavy form of hydrogen known as deuterium.