2024-10-03 06:31:31
An explosion kills the brother of its inventor Alfred Nobel, the father is saved by chance
“It must be an irony of fate that I was prescribed nitroglycerin as a medicine,” Alfred Nobel often repeated towards the end of his life.
The irony is that his nitroglycerin laboratory in the center of Stockholm blew up a few decades earlier precisely during tests of his inventions in a liquid explosion that later became the cause of the death of dozens of people.
The thunderous Saturday morning
The morning of September 3, 1864 in Stockholm began as a normal Saturday. Someone goes to the opening of the school year at a swimming school, where the Queen herself will be present, another is interested in a sale of expensive silk fabrics in one of the luxury stores. The Barber of Seville is about to open at the Grand Theater Royal, and many of the men are discussing the imminent end of the war between Denmark and Prussia, about which all the papers are writing: the Germans have at last avenged the failure of 15 years ago and taken back Schleswig . In two words – a normal weekend in a flourishing European country in the 19th century.
At 11 a.m. on the day in question, 31-year-old Alfred Nobel welcomes home an acquaintance of his, the engineer Blum, his wife Andrieta is busy cleaning, and his father Immanuel and his younger brother Emil are already working in the laboratory, trying to simplify production of nitroglycerin.
It is at this moment that a monstrous explosion goes off in the city. The blast knocks Nobel to the ground and everyone in the house is showered with shards of glass from the broken windows. The windows of many houses in the city were also broken, and in most shops goods fell from the shelves.
Judging by the huge plume of black smoke, it was Nobel’s lab itself that blew up – the same one they complain they don’t feel safe because of the explosives experiments there.
The journalists who arrived at the scene of the accident dramatically describe what happened – the laboratory is almost completely destroyed, dead bodies are lying everywhere, which can hardly be recognized. “A shapeless mass of flesh and bones that can hardly be defined as a human body,” wrote one of the newspapers.
Alfred Nobel’s brother is also among the corpses, and his father is saved by chance – shortly before the explosion, he leaves because he needs to receive a registered letter.
The roofs of the houses around the laboratory have been blown off, some even have walls falling. The public reaction is furious – why are such dangerous experiments taking place in the middle of a residential area? During the police investigation, Immanuel Nobel claimed that there was no production, it was a question of minor experiments, for which no special permission was required, and there was no more than 130 kg of nitroglycerin. Judging by the scale of the destruction, however, the volume is many times underestimated.
The Nobel family does like everyone else – they shift all the blame to the dead, so Emil is unanimously declared the main culprit of the explosion, which killed at least five people. In all probability, he forgot to check the temperature of the mixture, did not cool the storage vessel, which overheated. That’s how the explosion itself happened.
In the end, the court ruled that the Nobel family must pay all victims sufficient compensation. However, some residents of Stockholm are not quite satisfied and are seeking their rights out of court. For example, Immanuel Nobel was beaten by unknown persons and pushed down the stairs of his home.
More dangerous to yourself, than for the enemy
Nitroglycerin, discovered by the Italian Ascanio Sobrero, was the first explosive substance capable of detonation. The black powder known from the Middle Ages, from a purely physical point of view, can only burn quickly, under certain conditions, but the front of the burning moves at subsonic speed and therefore does not generate a blast wave. The destructive effect of a gunpowder explosion is not particularly great, which allows it to be used in cannons and firearms without any particular danger to the muzzle. But the property in question does not allow gunpowder to be used effectively for bombs in war, as well as for building explosions.
So when news of a very powerful new explosive comes out, the military is the first to turn their attention to it. Unfortunately for them, it became clear almost immediately that it was not going to be widely used on the battlefield.
First, nitroglycerin under normal conditions is a thick liquid, so there is no way to store it in the conditions of war. Second, the substance discovered by Sobrero was too dangerous and unstable. At the same time, gunpowder could be stored in ordinary barrels and only had to be protected from sparks and fire.
But with the new liquid blast, this is not possible. When, a year after the Stockholm tragedy, Nobel’s company opened a factory near Hamburg and began selling a mixture of nitroglycerin and gunpowder under the trade name Blasting Oil, it was initially in high demand. But its use carries risks, and regularly in Germany, and not only there, factory buildings explode and dozens of workers die. In 1866, a container of Blasting Oil left over from the construction of a tunnel under the Donner Mountains in Nevada exploded, destroying a construction company office in San Francisco. Nitroglycerin tubes regularly explode in Britain again with human casualties, forcing the government to de facto ban it.
Of course, such an explosive cannot become standard for use in the army, because it is more dangerous to its own than to the enemy. In fact, nitroglycerin was only used in some experimental mines. Therefore, the discovery of a new substance is reached.
The dynamite
The ban on nitroglycerin in many countries forced Nobel to look for a new physical form for his explosive. At a minimum, it should convert it from a liquid to a solid.
One of Nobel’s partners suggested that they soak some substance with nitroglycerin, take it to the client and squeeze out the liquid there again. As an absorbent, they initially chose kieselguhr, known by its scientific name diatomaceous earth – a mineral powder obtained from ancient algae. But it soon became clear that separating the nitroglycerin from the kieselguhr was very difficult, and much of the explosive mixture was wasted.
Then Nobel came up with the idea of choosing such an absorbent from which the nitroglycerin did not have to be squeezed out. He tried many substances, from sawdust to charcoal and cellulose, but nothing compared to kieselguhr. So it remains only to determine the correct proportions. Finally it becomes clear to him that it is one-quarter diatomaceous earth to three-quarters nitroglycerin. An almost dry stick is obtained, which does not explode from an accidental spark, but needs a special detonator capsule.
Nobel patented his invention in 1867 and fought hard against unlicensed counterfeiters. The explosive substance, which they soon christened dynamite, was still unsuitable for military purposes, but proved indispensable for construction and mining activities.
From that point on, nitroglycerin was practically not used as an explosive. But one of the varieties of dynamite was used by the Russian terrorists who killed Tsar Alexander II and the Moscow Governor-General – Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich. Revolutionary terror was virtually the only large-scale application of Nobel’s invention.
In the second half of the 19th century, they discovered that diluted liquid nitroglycerin was a medicine to relieve angina and lower blood pressure. Ironically, doctors also prescribe it to its inventor.
The substance has another application that the inventor hardly imagined – a lubricant for condoms. Nitroglycerin helps dilate blood vessels in the penis, which may help treat some types of impotence. Research shows that the gel in question is at least safe and works faster than Viagra.