![]() In mining and engineering, powder was a passable, if imprecise, tool. When that reaction is contained, it produces explosive energy – enough to propel a bullet from a gun (but not enough to burst the barrel), and, in high enough quantities, enough to blow through rock. A mixture of sulphur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate, black powder is what’s called a low explosive: it deflagrates, or burns, creating heat and gas. Heritage Images // Getty Imagesįor nearly 1,000 years, the only widely-used explosive was black powder. Women mixing dynamite at Nobel’s Ardeer Factory in 1897. It was a divisive invention – years later, a French newspaper would credit Nobel with “finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before” – but one that has shaped society and helped extend the bounds of what humans can build: dynamite. By mixing the oil with a stabilizing agent, he created the safest, most controllable explosive the world had ever seen. It was a deadly problem, but a year after the explosion in downtown San Francisco, Nobel had a solution. Explosives had become a vital tool of industry, used to mine everything from silver to salt, but blasting oil was volatile, and accidental detonations weren’t uncommon. Just two years earlier, the Swedish inventor’s younger brother, Emil, was killed in an explosion at the family factory in Stockholm. They weren’t the first deaths caused by the combustible liquid branded with Alfred Nobel’s name. It was April of 1866, and the box, stored in the San Francisco office of Wells, Fargo & Co., was full of a liquid called “Nobel’s Blasting Oil,” which the Placer Herald of Auburn, California described, in a graphic news brief about the incident, as “a new explosive five times more powerful in its effects than powder.” ![]()
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