In 1874, the Italian Ascanio Sobrero managed to develop an oil with very explosive properties - nitroglycerin. But the oil was difficult to deal with, it exploded even if it was inadvertently shaken too hard, so it was dangerous to transport and use it. It was only when it was mixed with diatomaceous earth that the explosive became usable and turned the world upside down in many ways, getting the name "dynamite" from its inventor, Alfred Nobel.
Dynamite has proven to be extremely useful for a variety of construction jobs, used to build everything from roads and mines to railways and ports. Dynamite contributed to global economic development and became the main ingredient and product of Alfred Nobel's international industrial network.
But Nobel was not happy with the use of dynamite in the military field, and in 1895, a year before his death, he decided to bequeath his huge fortune to a foundation that was to present prizes in the field of chemistry, physics, physiology or medicine, literature and work for the benefit of the world. … These prizes are known as the Nobel Prizes.
Son of an inventor
Alfred Bernhard Nobel (Alfred Bernhard Nobel) was born on October 21, 1833 in Stockholm. His father's name was Immanuel Nobel, he was a builder and also engaged in invention, but with varying success. When Alfred was young, the family had such a hard time that they decided to move to St. Petersburg and build a new, better life there. Immanuel Nobel went first in 1837, and when the money got better, he brought his family there - his wife Andrietta Nobel and the sons of Robert, Ludwig and Alfred.
Soon after all the Nobels settled in St. Petersburg, another, fourth, son, Emil, was born in the family. In total, Immanuel and Andrietta Nobel had eight children, but four of them died in childhood. In St. Petersburg, Immanuel Nobel was involved in the production of mines and steam engines, and he managed to achieve a fairly good position.
Robert, Ludwig and Alfred received a solid interdisciplinary education: they studied classical literature and philosophy and, in addition to their native language, spoke four more fluently. The older brothers decided to focus on mechanics, while Alfred studied chemistry.
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Alfred was especially interested in experimental chemistry. At the age of 17, he went abroad for two years on a study trip, during which he met with famous chemists and took practical lessons from them. The Nobel brothers also worked in their father's factory, and if anything, Alfred seems to have inherited his father's interest in conducting bold and life-threatening experiments.
Deadly experiments with nitroglycerin
So, nitroglycerin was invented - a mixture of sulfuric acid, nitric acid and glycerin, and although it was still new and undeveloped, Messrs. Nobel was also familiar with it. However, no one really knew how to use this substance. It was clear that if you put a small amount of nitroglycerin on a workbench and hit it with a hammer, it would explode, or at least the part where the hammer hit would explode. The problem was that the explosion of nitroglycerin was difficult to completely control.
In 1858, the factory of Alfred Nobel's father went bankrupt. The father and mother moved back to Sweden with their youngest son Emil, while Robert Nobel went to Finland. Ludwig Nobel founded his own mechanical workshop, where Alfred Nobel, apparently, also helped - and at the same time conducted various experiments with nitroglycerin.
The work gained momentum when Alfred Nobel moved to Stockholm. He received his first Swedish patent for a method of producing "Nobel's explosive oil," as he called nitroglycerin. Together with his father and brother Emil, he began to produce the substance commercially in Heleneborg.
Alfred and Immanuel Nobeli wanted to create a safe explosive, but the manufacturing process was not at all safe. For the first time, the experiments had truly tragic consequences: in 1864, the laboratory flew into the air, and several people, including Emile Nobel, were killed. Messrs. Nobels simply did not realize how dangerous a substance they were dealing with and how risky it was to conduct experiments in the city.
Explosion accidents have occurred outside Sweden as well, and many countries have introduced laws prohibiting the use and transport of Nobel's explosive oil. Stockholm authorities understandably banned the production of nitroglycerin in the city. Tens of thousands of people actually laid down their lives for the experiments that were carried out in Nobel's factories, many died because the product that his enterprise supplied was so dangerous.
"The brain is a generator of impressions of a very unstable nature, and the one who has the impression that he is right, just thinks that he is right," - said Alfred Nobel in one of his notebooks.
Nitroglycerin + diatomaceous earth = true
But despite all this, Alfred Nobel found an effective way to market his product, and although the public feared this substance, nitroglycerin was soon used to blast everything from railway tunnels to mines and mines. So only six weeks after the Heleneborg bombing accident, Alfred Nobel founded Nitroglycerin AB, the world's first nitroglycerin factory, and bought a site with a house near Vinterviken to continue his activities there.
In 1963, Alfred Nobel also received a patent for a detonator - a small primer with a fuse that ignites the rest of the explosives, which was needed to make the nitroglycerin explode through a cord. This was part of Nobel's greatest discovery, which was already very close.
Two years later, in 1865, Nobel moved to Hamburg, Germany. After many difficulties and several more or less serious explosions, he finally invented dynamite. He mixed nitroglycerin with kieselguhr, a porous sedimentary rock made up of diatom sediments that he took from the banks of the Elbe River. As a result, he finally got a stable mixture with good explosive properties. He gave the mass an easy-to-use bar form that only exploded when the detonator was fired.
The name dynamite comes from the Greek "dynamis", which means "strength": probably, this idea appeared in connection with the then name of the electric motor - dynamo.
Dynamite made Alfred Nobel a world famous inventor. He received a patent for it in 1867, but then the experiment was not over yet.
Nobel wanted to make dynamite even more powerful and give it water resistance, which was not yet available. He mixed nitroglycerin with a small amount of pyroxylin and the result was explosive gelatin that could be used underwater. 10 years after the invention of dynamite, he received a patent for his third great invention - ballistite, or Nobel powder, which was a mixture of equal parts of nitroglycerin and pyroxylin. The advantage of ballistitis was low smoke: when it exploded, very little smoke was formed.
During his work in the laboratory, Alfred Nobel also developed business skills. He traveled to different countries and demonstrated his explosive and how to use it. Dynamite, for example, was used extensively in the construction of the world's third-largest Saint Gotthard Tunnel, which runs through the Alps in Switzerland.
A lonely director with poor health
In this state of affairs, Nobel moved his headquarters to Paris and bought a large villa on the then Avenue de Malakoff (today it is called Avenue Poincaré). He created one of the first multinational enterprises in Europe with over 20 subsidiaries and ran this business empire himself.
Alfred Nobel traveled the world - to Scotland, Vienna and Stockholm - and wrote thousands of business letters. Dynamite was especially successfully sold in the USA, factories were built in Great Britain, Switzerland and Italy. Even in Asia, there was one company. The Nobel seemed to enjoy making a lot of money. Despite this, he was not greedy and showed generosity towards the environment.
But Nobel's health was poor: he regularly had bouts of angina pectoris. It must have been hard to handle the grueling administrative affairs of an entire international network of businesses with his own hands, and despite striving to maintain a healthy, tobacco and alcohol-free lifestyle, Alfred Nobel often felt tired and sick.
"Alfred Nobel made a pleasant impression … A little below average height, with a dark beard, not beautiful, but not ugly facial features, which were enlivened only by the soft look of blue eyes, and the voice sounded now melancholy, now mocking." - said about Alfred Nobel his girlfriend Bertha von Suttner (Bertha von Suttner).
In 1889, Alfred Nobel moved to San Remo, where he set up a new laboratory for himself. Italy bought a license to manufacture his low-smoke powder, and the local climate was favorable for his health, which improved slightly. He devoted all his time to invention and literature, there was a large library in his house, and his collection of fiction, for example, was preserved in the Nobel Library of the Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Alfred Nobel died in 1896 in his villa in San Remo. He was 63 years old. When the Nobel heirs traveled to San Remo to claim their share of the inheritance, they were faced with a real surprise.
A startling will
When Nobel's current testament was read, the audience was amazed. The testament stated that Nobel's capital, at the time of his death, was estimated at a dizzying 35 million Swedish kronor, will form the basis of a fund that will annually spend the proceeds of this amount on bonuses to people who have brought humanity "the greatest benefit" during the year. The nominee's nationality and gender shouldn't have mattered.
The profit had to be divided into five equal parts, each of which would be a prize in the field of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, as well as literature. The fifth prize was to go to the one who most of all contributed to the establishment of fraternal relations between people or the reduction of armies, in other words, fought for peace. The prizes in physics and chemistry were to be distributed by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, physiology or medicine by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, the literary prize by the Swedish Academy, and the Peace Prize by a commission of five people elected by the Storting by the Norwegian parliament.
The will became a worldwide sensation. Swedish newspapers described Nobel as a well-known inventor who retained an interest in Sweden despite spending his life abroad (although in reality he rather simply missed his homeland and was not a nationalist at all). The Dagens Nyheter newspaper stated that Nobel was a famous friend of the world:
“The inventor of dynamite was the most devoted and hopeful supporter of the peace movement. He was convinced that the more devastating the murder weapons were, the sooner the madness of war would become impossible.
However, the authenticity of the will was called into question, and those organizations that were tasked with distributing prizes were initially plagued by doubts. The Swedish king was also critical of the awards, especially the fact that they were supposed to be international. After legal disputes and active protests from Nobel's relatives, the Nobel Committee was created to take care of the Nobel's condition and organize the distribution of prizes.
An idealist of a kind
Alfred Nobel's life was unusual in many ways. After moving from St. Petersburg, he had to fight for his inventions and his enterprise for ten years. Already a successful businessman in his old age, Alfred Nobel held over 350 patents. But he lived in isolation and rarely participated in social events.
In his youth, he faced difficulties due to the fact that he came up with ideas that he could not translate into reality due to lack of resources. Perhaps that is why he decided to distribute his millions to unknown people who made significant discoveries - as a reward to unsettled, diligent and full of ideas individuals from any part of the world. In addition, he himself said that an inherited condition is a misfortune that only contributes to the apathy of the human race.
Nobel had thought many times about establishing a prize, and he was very interested in working for the world. Among other things, he had the idea to create a European peace tribunal. Clearly, he wanted to bequeath his fortune to goals that could support his own passions in life: science, literature and work for the good of the world.
The moral conflict that the inventor, who created so many destructive weapons, was an ardent supporter of peace, he himself apparently did not notice.
Alfred Nobel, who dedicated his life to creating ever more powerful explosives used to sow death and destruction in war, also founded an important peace prize, and this created a controversial impression. Apparently, Nobel perceived himself primarily as a scientist and believed that the use of inventions was no longer his business. As the newspaper Dagens Nyheter wrote after his death, he believed that he could make war impossible by simply making the weapon terrible enough.
Putting together the entire fortune of Alfred Nobel turned out to be a huge task. Nobel appointed his employee Ragnar Sohlman to be the executor of the will, and only three and a half years after Nobel's death, the king was able to approve the charter and rules of the Nobel Committee. Due to the international nature of the award, as well as the size of the prize money, it was treated with great respect from the very beginning. The first five Nobel Prizes were awarded on the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death, December 10, 1901.
Alfred Nobel never married, but he did have a long affair with a young Austrian woman, Sofie Hess, who was 20 when they met. He was clearly in love with Sophie Hess and even bought her an apartment in Paris, but it seems that she never managed to meet his requirements for a potential wife, and when she finally found herself another life partner, their relationship ended in nothing.
“I am not an expert on people, I can only state facts,” wrote Alfred Nobel in a letter to Sophie Hess.
Nobel was a very creative person, a lot of ideas were constantly spinning in his head. “If 300 ideas come to my mind in a year, and at least one of them is applicable to the case, I’m already satisfied,” Alfred Nobel once wrote. He wrote down aphorisms and ideas of inventions in small notebooks, and from them you can get an idea of the worldview of the inventor, who often walked immersed in his thoughts:
Railroad Defense: An explosive charge for a locomotive to destroy substances placed on rails.
“A cartridge without a sleeve. Gunpowder ignited with a small glass tube that breaks."
"A shotgun with a spray of water into the barrel to avoid smoke and recoil."
"Soft glass".
"Getting aluminum".
And: "When we talk about understanding and reason, we mean perception, which in our time is considered the norm for most educated people."
Nanna Stenberg-Gustafsson
