About
Kieselguhr is in nature a particular soil type which Alfred Nobel, of Nobel Peace Prize fame, discovered would slow and reduce the risks of life and limb in the use of nitroglycerine his family developed for civilian projects such as road building and mining purposes.
“In 1850, Alfred Nobel went to study in America, but after 1 year he returned to Sweden without completing his studies. After coming to Sweden, he became involved in the study of explosives, especially nitroglycerin, at his father’s factory. On September 3, 1864, a terrible explosion occurred in Alfred’s father’s factory and the entire factory was destroyed. Alfred’s younger brother died in this accident. After that, Alfred began in search of calming and controlling this unexpectedly exploding substance like nitroglycerin.”
“Ordinary dynamite consists of a mixture of 75 per cent of nitro-glycerine and 25 per cent of kieselguhr. The guhr as imported (Messrs A. Haake & Co. are the chief importers) contains from 20 to 30 per cent of water and organic matter. The water may be very easily estimated by drying a weighed quantity in a platinum crucible at 100 deg. C. for some time and re-weighing, and the organic matter by igniting the residue strongly over a Bunsen burner. Before the guhr can be used for making dynamite it must be calcined, in order not only to get rid of moisture, but also the organic matter.
A good guhr should absorb four times its weight of nitro-glycerine, and should then form a comparatively dry mixture.” Project Gutenberg Presents Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise by P. Gerald Sanford
Alfred Nobel Bio And Brother’s Death
Alfred Nobel, the scientist who discovered dynamite, died on this day in 1896. Five years after his death, the first Nobel Prizes were awarded on December 10, 1901. Alfred Bernhard Nobel (Alfred Bernhard Nobel, 1833–1896) was a Swedish chemist and engineer.
He was born on October 21, 1833 in Stockholm, Sweden, on the shores of the
Baltic Sea. His father lived in St. Petersburg with his family and manufactured firearms, mines, and torpedoes for the Russian government in addition to agricultural implements.
In 1850, Alfred Nobel went to study in America, but after 1 year he returned to Sweden without completing his studies. After coming to Sweden, he became involved in the study of explosives, especially nitroglycerin, at his father’s factory. On September 3, 1864, a terrible explosion occurred in Alfred’s father’s factory and the entire factory was destroyed.
Alfred’s younger brother died in this accident. After that, Alfred began in search of calming and controlling this unexpectedly exploding substance like nitroglycerin.
Patented As Dynamite
In 1867, Alfred also discovered smokeless gunpowder, which was called the invention of cordite. Both these
products started being used in industry and war. This earned him a lot of money and accelerated his research work.
Alfred Nobel researched and found that when nitroglycerin is added to an absorbent inert substance such as
diatomaceous earth, it becomes safer and more convenient. He patented this mixture as Dynamite in 1867.
Nitroglycerin is used in the manufacture of dynamite. Nitroglycerin is more sensitive than necessary. Alfred had
talked about bringing peace to the world with dynamite.
Nobel Prize Awarded For The First Time
It is said that seeing the misuse of dynamite, Alfred was saddened by his invention. For this, he expressed his desire to reward the people who benefited humanity from his property in his will. On November 27, 1895, Alfred Nobel wrote his last will, which was opened after the death of Alfred Nobel in 1896. The Nobel Prizes were awarded for the first time in 1901. Let us tell you that Alfred Nobel has 355 patents in his name today, but people know him more because of dynamite. After the invention of dynamite, it was used so much in the construction industry that
Alfred opened factories to make dynamite in 90 places. These were factories in more than 20 countries. He used to
roam around the factories continuously. Because of this people called him ‘Europe’s richest vagabond’.
Alfred Nobel Bio And Brother’s Death
As a young man, Nobel studied with chemist Nikolai Zinin; then, in 1850, went to Paris to further the work. There
he met Ascanio Sobrero, who had invented nitroglycerin three years before. Sobrero strongly opposed the use of
nitroglycerin because it was unpredictable, exploding when subjected to variable heat or pressure. But Nobel
became interested in finding a way to control and use nitroglycerin as a commercially usable explosive; it had much
more power than gunpowder.
“Preparing Gunpowder”
In 1851 at age 18, he went to the United States for one year to study, working for a
short period under Swedish-American inventor John Ericsson, who designed the American Civil War ironclad, USS Monitor. Nobel filed his first patent, an English patent for a gas meter, in 1857, while his first Swedish patent, which he received in 1863, was on “ways to prepare gunpowder”.
Alfred opened factories to make dynamite in 90 places. These were factories in more than 20 countries. He used to roam around the factories continuously. Because of this people called him ‘Europe’s richest vagabond’.
The family factory produced armaments for the Crimean War (1853–1856), but had difficulty switching back to regular domestic production when the fighting ended and they filed for bankruptcy. In 1859, Nobel’s father left his factory in the care of the second son, Ludvig Nobel (1831–1888), who greatly improved the business. Nobel and his parents returned to Sweden from Russia and Nobel devoted himself to the study of explosives, and especially to the safe manufacture and use of nitroglycerin. Nobel invented a detonator in 1863, and in 1865 designed the blasting cap.
On 3 September 1864, a shed used for preparation of nitroglycerin exploded at the factory in Heleneborg,
Stockholm, Sweden, killing five people, including Nobel’s younger brother Emil. Fazed by the accident, Nobel
founded the company Nitroglycerin Aktiebolaget AB in Vinterviken so that he could continue to work in a more
isolated area. Nobel invented dynamite in 1867, a substance easier and safer to handle than the more unstable
nitroglycerin. Dynamite was patented in the US and the UK and was used extensively in mining and the building of
transport networks internationally. In 1875, Nobel invented gelignite, more stable and powerful than dynamite, and
in 1887, patented ballistite, a predecessor of cordite.
Awards For Nobel
Nobel was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1884, the same institution that would
later select laureates for two of the Nobel prizes, and he received an honorary doctorate from Uppsala University in
1893.
Nobel’s brothers Ludvig and Robert founded the oil company Branobel and became hugely rich in their own right.
Nobel invested in these and amassed great wealth through the development of these new oil regions. During his life,
Nobel was issued 355 patents internationally, and by his death, his business had established more than 90 armaments
factories, despite his apparently pacifist character.
Inventions
Nobel found that when nitroglycerin was incorporated in an absorbent inert substance like kieselguhr (diatomaceous
earth) it became safer and more convenient to handle, and this mixture he patented in 1867 as “dynamite”. Nobel
demonstrated his explosive for the first time that year, at a quarry in Redhill, Surrey, England. In order to help
reestablish his name and improve the image of his business from the earlier controversies associated with dangerous
explosives, Nobel had also considered naming the highly powerful substance “Nobel’s Safety Powder”, but settled
with Dynamite instead, referring to the Greek word for “power” (δύναμις).
Nobel later combined nitroglycerin with various nitrocellulose compounds, similar to collodion, but settled on a
more efficient recipe combining another nitrate explosive, and obtained a transparent, jelly-like substance, which
was a more powerful explosive than dynamite. Gelignite, or blasting gelatine, as it was named, was patented in
1876; and was followed by a host of similar combinations, modified by the addition of potassium nitrate and various
other substances. [33] Gelignite was more stable, transportable and conveniently formed to fit into bored holes, like
those used in drilling and mining, than the previously used compounds. It was adopted as the standard technology
for mining in the “Age of Engineering”, bringing Nobel a great amount of financial success, though at a significant
cost to his health. An offshoot of this research resulted in Nobel’s invention of ballistite, the precursor of many
modern smokeless powder explosives and still used as a rocket propellant.
Nobel Prize
Reading His Own Obituary
In 1888, the death of his brother Ludvig caused several newspapers to publish obituaries of Alfred in error. One
French newspaper condemned him for his invention of military explosives—not, as is commonly quoted, dynamite,
which was mainly used for civilian applications—and is said to have brought about his decision to leave a better
legacy after his death. The obituary stated, Le marchand de la mort est mort (“The merchant of death is dead”),
and went on to say, “Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday.” Nobel read the obituary and was appalled at the idea that he would be remembered in this way. His decision to posthumously donate the majority of his wealth to found the Nobel Prize has been credited at least in part to him wanting to leave behind a better legacy.
On 27 November 1895, at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris, Nobel signed his last will and testament and set aside the bulk of his estate to establish the Nobel Prizes, to be awarded annually without distinction of nationality. After taxes and bequests to individuals, Nobel’s will allocated 94% of his total assets, 31,225,000 Swedish kronor, to establish the five Nobel Prizes. This converted to £1,687,837 (GBP) at the time. In 2012, the capital was worth around SEK 3.1 billion (US$472 million, EUR 337 million), which is almost twice the amount of the initial capital, taking inflation into account.
The first three of these prizes are awarded for eminence in physical science, in chemistry and in medical science or
physiology; the fourth is for literary work “in an ideal direction” and the fifth prize is to be given to the person or society that renders the greatest service to the cause of international fraternity, in the suppression or reduction of standing armies, or in the establishment or furtherance of peace congresses. The formulation for the literary prize being given for a work “in an ideal direction” (i idealisk riktning in Swedish), is cryptic and has caused much confusion. For many years, the Swedish Academy interpreted “ideal” as “idealistic” (idealistisk) and used it as a reason not to give the prize to important but less romantic authors, such as Henrik Ibsen and Leo Tolstoy. This interpretation has since been revised, and the prize has been awarded to, for example, Dario Fo and José Saramago, who do not belong to the camp of literary idealism.
There was room for interpretation by the bodies he had named for deciding on the physical sciences and chemistry
prizes, given that he had not consulted them before making the will. In his one-page testament, he stipulated that the
money go to discoveries or inventions in the physical sciences and to discoveries or improvements in chemistry. He
had opened the door to technological awards, but had not left instructions on how to deal with the distinction between science and technology. Since the deciding bodies he had chosen were more concerned with the former, the prizes went to scientists more often than engineers, technicians or other inventors.
Sweden’s central bank Sveriges Riksbank celebrated its 300th anniversary in 1968 by donating a large sum of
money to the Nobel Foundation to be used to set up a sixth prize in the field of economics in honour of Alfred
Nobel. In 2001, Alfred Nobel’s great-great-nephew, Peter Nobel (born 1931), asked the Bank of Sweden to
differentiate its award to economists given “in Alfred Nobel’s memory” from the five other awards. This request
added to the controversy over whether the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel
is actually a legitimate “Nobel Prize“.