Nobel sought peaceful use of explosives

Press, 29 July 1986, Page 18

Nobel sought peaceful use of explosives

Explosives, the tools of war, earned a fortune for Alfred Nobel. But it is in the name of peace that he is remembered. Dynamite and blasting gelatin were invented by Nobel, who spent most of his life studying explosives. He was born in Sweden in 1833, the child of a man who also invented and made explosives. Eventually he went into his father’s business. A liquid explosive called nitroglycerine, a powerful and dangerous material, was the subject of Alfred’s first important work. He discovered a safer way of setting off a nitroglycerine explosion, by using a detonator. But the liquid he worked with cost him dearly. In the Nobels’ factory a nitro-

glycerine explosion killed Emil Nobel, Alfred’s brother, and four others.

The accident strengthened Alfred’s determination to make the explosive safer. The answer lay in a type of earth the casks, containing the liquid nitroglycerine, were packed in. When the liquid seeped into the earth, called “kieselguhr,” it formed a pulp. Alfred dried the pulp, and formed it into sticks. The new, dry explosive was called dynamite, the name taken from the Greek word for power, “dynamis.” During Alfred Nobel’s time his invention was used to blast through the Alps to make way for the St Gotthard railway tunnel in Switzerland. Fame and fortune came to Alfred

Nobel because of his inventions. A millionaire, Nobel wanted to use his fortune to further the work of science and peace. In his will Alfred Nobel left money to fund the five prizes we know as the Nobel prizes. Every year since his death, in 1896, the Nobel prizes have been awarded in the form of a medal and a large sum of money to people chosen as outstanding in chemistry, medicine, physics, and literature, and to the person chosen as having made the greatest contribution to peace in the world. The prizes have been awarded to some great people, including Sir Winston Churchill (literature), the Rev. Martin Luther King (peace) and the inventor of radio, Marconi (physics).