Dynamite
Dynamite
was one of the most ubiquitous and relatively "safe" explosives in the
19th through 20th centuries. It is a wax covered cardboard
wrapped cylinder containing explosives made with a paste version of
Nitroglycerine. Nitroglycerine is
extremely sensitive to shock and in the early days, when impure
nitroglycerine was used, it was very difficult to predict under which
conditions nitroglycerine would explode. Alfred Nobel studied these
problems in detail, and was the first to produce nitroglycerine on an
industrial scale. It should be noted that older dynamite may leak
out the very destabilized exude of nitroglycerine and therefore old
dynamite sticks are no longer to be considered stable.
Early Explosives Techniques
(Dynamite on the far right)
In 1852 Alfred Nobel began to try and make nitroglycerine more stable so it could be used safely as a commercially useful explosive. In 1861, his experiments with nitroglycerine had shown such promise that Alfred went to Paris to raise money for the construction of a factory. A Paris banker agreed to loan the Nobels 100,000 francs to build the first nitroglycerine plant, which was located in Heleneborg, near Stockholm.
Alfred Nobel realised that once the manufacturing process had been solved, he needed to find a means of detonating the nitroglycerine (making it explode). Nobel experimented with a percussion cap that had been in existence for several years, and produced an improved design. (The percussion cap uses a substance called fulminate of mercury, with the chemical formula Hg(CNO)2. Fulminate of mercury is extremely sensitive to mechanical shocks - a sharp blow, or even a little finger pressure, can cause it to detonate! A small amount of fulminate of mercury in a tiny metal cap can be used to ignite gunpowder or other explosive.) It was the use of these blasting caps to set off the detonation which was particularly important to the success of the commercial use of nitroglycerine.
In 1864 Nobel suffered a serious setback when there was an explosion at the small factory at Heleneborg which killed his youngest brother Emil and another chemist. Because of this explosion, the Government prohibited the manufacture of nitroglycerine near people's homes. Nobel was forced to continue his work on a barge moored in the middle of a lake.
However Nobel soon found that mixing nitroglycerine with kieselguhr
(a mineral containing a large amount of silica) would turn the liquid
into a paste which could be shaped into rods of a size and form
suitable for insertion into drilling holes - and which only exploded
when they were detonated. In 1867 he patented this material using the
name dynamite (from the Greek word meaning 'power'). This was
the first "safe" high explosive.
Edited from the text found on the Timeline Science
website found at:
http://www.timelinescience.org/dynam.htm