Nobel's dangerous great invention. Dynamite is the invention of Alfred Nobel

In the 1850s, young Alfred Nobel worked in his father's company in St. Petersburg, which at that time specialized in the production of ammunition. After graduation Crimean War in 1856, orders became scarce and Nobel and his family returned to their native Stockholm. He's all there free time spent in a small laboratory where he experimented with chemicals. What fascinated him most were explosions.

In 1846, the Italian chemist Ascaño Sorbero discovered nitroglycerin, a powerful and promising, but dangerous explosive to handle.

The use of nitroglycerin has repeatedly led to tragedies. So, in 1864, an explosion occurred in a laboratory at the Nobel plant, which killed five people, including 21-year-old Emil Nobel, younger brother Alfreda. In 1866, two more major explosions occurred - in a warehouse in San Francisco and on a steamship off the coast of Panama.

In total, more than 60 people died, and losses amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars. The governments of many countries were concerned about the incidents; nitroglycerin production plants were closed in Germany and Norway; its circulation was banned in France and Belgium. Such a ban was planned to be introduced in other countries.

Nobel wanted to find a way to be safer and effective use nitroglycerin. As a result of experiments, he developed a suitable detonator - a metal capsule filled with mercury.

Mixing nitroglycerin with various materials- gypsum, gunpowder, coal, brick dust, sawdust - Nobel concluded that diatomaceous earth, a sedimentary rock consisting mainly of silica, was best suited to reduce the explosiveness of nitroglycerin.

According to legend, this discovery occurred by accident when a bottle of nitroglycerin leaked and it soaked the diatomaceous earth in which the bottles were placed. However, Nobel himself denied this version.

“I have certainly never noticed any accidental leakage of nitroglycerin into a diatomaceous earth package in such quantity as to form a plastic or even wet material, and the idea of ​​​​such an accident must have been invented by those who accept assumptions as reality,” he noted. -

What really attracted my attention to the use of infusor earth for dynamite was its excessive lightness when dry, which testifies, of course, to its great porosity.

Consequently, dynamite did not appear as a result of accident, but because I saw from the very beginning the disadvantages of liquid explosives and looked for ways to counteract them.

Further tests showed that when liquid nitroglycerin and kieselguhr are mixed in a 3:1 ratio, a thick paste with the density of putty is formed. Nobel's discovery made it possible to completely abandon the use of nitroglycerin in liquid form.

On November 25, 1867, Alfred Nobel patented the resulting mixture, calling it "dynamite", from the Greek dynamis - strength.

The demand for new explosives turned out to be high - by the next year Nobel had established factories in 11 countries. Dynamite production increased hundreds of times over several years - if in 1868 only 20 tons of dynamite were produced, then five years later, in 1873, already 4,100 tons, and in 1875 - 8,000 tons. In some countries, meanwhile, the ban on nitroglycerin continued to apply, so dynamite had to be delivered under the guise of dishes or glass. It was actively used in the mining industry and in laying railway tracks.

Nobel's invention prompted many other researchers to experiment with nitroglycerin. Analogs of dynamite appeared based on magnesium carbonate, wood with nitrate, and wood and paper pulp with soda. Although there were accidents here, dynamite was already firmly established in industry and military affairs.

In 1875, Nobel had the idea to mix nitroglycerin with collodion, a cellulose-based solution.

So he got explosive jelly - jelly-like dynamite, safer to store than its solid counterpart.

Of course, criminals began using dynamite almost immediately. Between 1883 and 1885 alone, there were 13 explosions in London. In Russia, dynamite was actively used by the radical party “People's Will”.

The invention of dynamite made Nobel a millionaire. He died in 1896, bequeathing his fortune to establish a foundation that awards the Nobel Prizes annually.

Dynamite was actively used until the mid-twentieth century. Then it was gradually replaced by other types of explosives. Today, dynamite accounts for no more than 2% of the world's explosives turnover.

Alfred Bernhard Nobel was a Swedish chemist, engineer and industrialist who invented dynamite and more powerful explosives, and founded the Nobel Prize.

Biography

The future inventor of dynamite, Alfred Nobel, was born in Stockholm (Sweden) on October 21, 1833. He was the fourth son of Emmanuel and Caroline Nobel. Emmanuel was an engineer who married Caroline Andriette Alsel in 1827. The couple had eight children, of whom only Alfred and three brothers reached adulthood. As a child, Nobel was often ill, but from an early age he showed a keen curiosity. He was interested in explosives and learned basic engineering from his father. Meanwhile, my father suffered failures in various commercial enterprises, until he moved to St. Petersburg in 1837, where he became a successful manufacturer of mines and tools.

Life abroad

In 1842, Nobel's family left Stockholm to join their father in St. Petersburg. Alfred's now wealthy parents could now hire him private teachers, and he proved to be an eager student. By the age of 16, Nobel had become a competent chemist, fluent in English, German, French and Russian.

In 1850, Alfred left Russia to spend a year in Paris studying chemistry and then four years in the United States working under John Erickson, who was building the battleship Monitor. Upon returning to St. Petersburg, he worked in his father's factory, which produced military equipment during the Crimean War. After the end of hostilities in 1856, the company had difficulty transitioning to manufacturing equipment for steamships and went bankrupt in 1859.

Bet on nitroglycerin

The future inventor of dynamite did not stay in Russia and returned to Sweden with his parents, and his brothers Robert and Ludwig decided to save the remains of the family enterprise. Alfred soon began experimenting with explosives in a small laboratory on his father's estate. At that time, the only reliable explosive used in mines was black powder. The newly created liquid nitroglycerin was much more powerful, but it was so unstable that it could not provide any safety. However, in 1862 Nobel built a small plant to produce it, while conducting research in the hope of finding a way to control its detonation.

In 1863 he invented a practical detonator consisting of a wooden plug inserted into a large charge of nitroglycerin stored in a metal container. The explosion of a small charge of black powder in the plug detonated a much more powerful charge of liquid explosive. This detonator marked the beginning of Nobel's reputation as an inventor, as well as the fortune he would make as an explosives manufacturer.

In 1865, Alfred created an improved detonator cap, which consisted of a small metal cap containing a charge of mercury fulminate, detonated either by impact or moderate heat. This invention was the beginning modern use explosives.

Accident

Nitroglycerin itself, however, was difficult to transport and extremely dangerous to handle. So dangerous that Nobel's plant exploded in 1864, killing his younger brother Emil and others. Undeterred by this tragic accident, Alfred built several factories for use with his primers. These plants were as safe as the knowledge of the time allowed, but accidental explosions continued to occur.

Lucky Accident

Second important invention Nobel was dynamite. In 1867, he accidentally discovered that nitroglycerin was completely absorbed by porous silica, and the resulting mixture was much safer to use and easier to handle. Alfred, the inventor of dynamite (from the Greek δύναμις, “power”), received patents for it in Great Britain (1867) and the USA (1868). The explosive made its creator famous all over the world, and soon it began to be used in the construction of tunnels and canals, and the construction of railways and roads.

Rattlesnake jelly

In the 1870s and 80s, dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel built a network of explosives factories across Europe and formed a network of corporations to sell them. He also continued to experiment to find the best ones, and in 1875 he created a more powerful form of dynamite, jelly fulminate, which he patented the following year. Again by accident, he discovered that when mixed with a loose fibrous substance known as nitrocellulose, it formed a dense, plastic material that was highly resistant to water and had greater explosive power. In 1887, Nobel introduced ballistite, a nitroglycerin smokeless powder and precursor to cordite. Although Alfred held patents for dynamite and other explosives, he was in constant conflict with competitors who stole his technology, forcing him into protracted patent disputes on several occasions.

Oil, weapons, wealth

The brothers and Robert, meanwhile, developed newly discovered oil fields near Baku (now in Azerbaijan) on the Caspian Sea and became very rich themselves. Sales of explosives around the world, as well as participation in the brothers' companies in Russia, brought Alfred a huge fortune. In 1893, the inventor of dynamite became interested in the Swedish arms industry, and the following year he bought an iron smelter in Bofors, near Värmland, which became the center of a famous arms factory. Besides explosives, Nobel invented many other things, such as leather, and in total he registered more than 350 patents in various countries.

Ascetic, writer, pacifist

Nobel was the inventor of dynamite. complex personality, which puzzled his contemporaries. Although his business interests required him to travel almost constantly, he remained a solitary recluse who was prone to bouts of depression. Alfred led a solitary and simple life, he was a man of ascetic habits, but he could also be a polite host, a good listener, and a man of insightful mind.

The inventor of dynamite never married, and apparently preferred the joy of creativity to romantic attachments. He had an abiding interest in literature, writing plays, novels and poetry that remained almost entirely unpublished. He had amazing energy and found it difficult to relax after intense work. Among his contemporaries he enjoyed a reputation as a liberal or even a socialist, but in reality he distrusted democracy, was opposed to women's suffrage, and supported a soft paternalism towards his many employees. Although the Swedish inventor of dynamite was essentially a pacifist and hoped that the destructive power of his creations would help end war, his view of humanity and nations was pessimistic.

Surprise will

By 1895, Alfred had developed angina, and on December 10 next year he died of a cerebral hemorrhage in his own villa in San Remo (Italy). By this time, Nobel's business empire consisted of more than 90 factories producing explosives and ammunition. His will, drawn up in Paris on November 27, 1895 and deposited in a bank in Stockholm, contained a big surprise for his family, friends and the general public. The inventor of dynamite has always been generous to humanitarian and scientific charities and most left the state in trust management to found the most highly regarded international award, the Nobel Prize.

Death of a Death Dealer

One can only guess about the reasons for this decision. He was secretive and did not tell anyone about any of his decisions in the months leading up to his death. The most plausible possibility is that a strange incident in 1888 may have set off a chain of thought that led to his will. That same year, Alfred's brother Ludwig died while in Cannes, France. The French press reported his brother's death, but confused him with Alfred, and one of the newspapers published the headline "The Merchant of Death Died." Perhaps the inventor of dynamite instituted the prizes to avoid precisely the kind of posthumous reputation expressed by this premature obituary. It is obvious that the awards established reflect his interest in the fields of chemistry, physics, physiology and literature. There is also ample evidence that his friendship with the prominent Austrian pacifist Bertha von Suttner inspired him to create the Peace Prize.

Nobel himself, however, remains a figure full of paradoxes and contradictions: a brilliant, lonely man, part pessimist and part idealist, who invented powerful explosives used in modern warfare, and established the most prestigious awards in the world for intellectual services rendered to humanity.

In the history of mankind, there are many great discoveries that have greatly influenced the further development of human society. One of these important and significant discoveries was the invention of explosives. A very long time ago, even before our era, it was invented by the Chinese, although it appeared in Europe only in the 14th century. But it was only thanks to the Europeans that gunpowder became widely used throughout the world. It was used for both military and peaceful purposes. And only in the second half of the 19th century were new explosives discovered, the explosive force of which was hundreds of times greater than that of gunpowder.

Thus, the German chemist Schönbein, as a result of his experiments on treating cotton fibers with a mixture of concentrated acids, obtained nitrocellulose or pyroxylin. The Italian Ascanio Sobrero conducted similar experiments with glycerin; he slowly added it to a mixture of concentrated nitric and sulfuric acids. As a result, in 1847, an explosive was obtained that had enormous destructive power. This is how nitroglycerin was discovered, which was many times superior to pyroxylin in explosive characteristics. Initially it began to be used in mining. However, the production and use of nitroglycerin was suspended due to its sensitivity to detonation, which leads to an explosive reaction and an explosion of monstrous force.

Alfred Nobel was among the first to become interested in nitroglycerin and founded a plant for its production. In 1864, there was a terrible explosion at the factory, which killed his younger brother and four workers. Despite the dissatisfaction of the sponsors, Nobel managed to convince them to invest money in a rather dangerous enterprise. He continues to study the properties of nitroglycerin and how to safely produce it. Soon this issue was resolved and the factories began to work around the clock, but the problem remained safe transportation nitroglycerin. And here chance helped.

To soften the shaking, Nobel decided to transport bottles of nitroglycerin in a special porous earth - kieselguhr. One day, during transportation, one bottle broke and nitroglycerin spilled onto the ground. Nobel decided to explore the loose soil soaked in nitroglycerin. Experiments have shown that the properties of nitroglycerin have not changed at all, and the sensitivity to detonation has decreased several times. Earth soaked in nitroglycerin did not explode from friction, combustion, or mild impact. The explosion occurred from the ignition of a small volume of mercury fulminate, and the force of the explosion was the same as during the explosion of pure nitroglycerin in the same volume. This result exceeded the best hopes and in 1867 Nobel patented his discovery and named the resulting compound dynamite. In the same year, Nobel invented a mercury fulminate detonator to detonate dynamite.

Dynamite is widely used in the construction of roads, canals, tunnels and other objects. Nobel founded dynamite factories in France, Germany, and England, which allowed him over time to amass a huge fortune of 35 million crowns. According to the will of the great inventor, an annual international Nobel Prize behind outstanding discoveries in the field of chemistry, physics, medicine and other areas of human life.

Alfred Nobel was interested in chemistry from his youth (he studied with famous Nicholas Zinin) and at the age of 17 went from St. Petersburg, where the Nobel family lived, to Europe. In Paris from 1850 to 1852, he was a student of the famous chemist Théophile-Jules Pelouz, one of the inventors of pyroxylin. It was probably then that Alfred learned about a new explosive - nitroglycerin, which was obtained in 1847 by one of Pelus' students, the Italian Ascanio Sobrero. However, the discoverer warned that nitroglycerin not only has powerful strength, but also an extremely nasty character: it explodes at the slightest shock or heating.

After returning to Russia, Alfred considered various business opportunities, and Zinin reminded him of the promising explosives by dropping nitroglycerin on an anvil and hitting it with a hammer. Nobel noticed that only a small part of the substance reacted, but the demonstration impressed him, and he decided to start producing capricious explosives. In 1860, he began his experiments by placing a bottle of nitroglycerin in a jar of gunpowder, so that when the gunpowder exploded, all the nitroglycerin would detonate. By 1863, having gone through the stages of countless prototypes, this design had become a metal cartridge case with gunpowder (later replaced by fulminate) and a fuse - an almost modern detonator, which many rightly consider Nobel's main invention. At the same time, he patented “explosive oil” - a mixture of nitroglycerin and gunpowder, which he began to produce.

In the autumn of 1864, an explosion occurred at Nobel's factory in Stockholm, killing his brother Emil and four others. Alfred withstood this blow of fate, creating new company Nitroglycerin AB (although the authorities did not allow the construction of a factory in the city). In the spring of 1865, he established a German branch, and in 1866, an American one. But during Nobel's trip to the USA, the German factory blew up. In a laboratory located on a barge on the Elbe River, near the ruins of a factory, Alfred carried out experiments one after another, mixing nitroglycerin with various substances - chalk, sawdust, cement, trying to solve the problem. Only a year later he came across diatomaceous earth, which was found in abundance in the German wastelands. This porous rock absorbed nitroglycerin, turning into a plastic mass that exploded only from a detonator, while it could be safely thrown into the fire or hit with a hammer. Nobel called his invention "dynamite".

Dynamite played a huge role in construction modern civilization: punched tunnels, laid roads and dug canals.

Inventor: Alfred Nobel
A country: Sweden
Time of invention: 1867

For several centuries, people knew only one explosive - black, which was widely used both in war and in peaceful blasting. But the second half of the 19th century was marked by the invention of a whole family of new explosives, the destructive power of which was hundreds and thousands of times greater than that of gunpowder.

Their creation was preceded by several discoveries. Back in 1838, Pelouz conducted the first experiments on nitration organic matter. The essence of this reaction is that many carbonaceous substances, when treated with a mixture of concentrated nitric and sulfuric acids, give up their hydrogen, take in return the nitro group NO2 and turn into a powerful explosive.

Other chemists have investigated this interesting phenomenon. In particular, Schönbein, by nitrating cotton, obtained pyroxylin in 1846. In 1847, by acting in a similar way on glycerin, Sobrero discovered nitroglycerin, an explosive that had colossal destructive power. At first, no one was interested in nitroglycerin. Sobrero himself returned to his experiments only 13 years later and described the exact method of nitration of glycerol.

After this, the new substance found some use in mining. Initially, it was poured into a well, plugged with clay and exploded using a cartridge dipped into it. However, the best effect was achieved when the capsule with mercury fulminate was ignited.

What explains the exceptional explosive power of nitroglycerin? It was found that during an explosion, its decomposition occurs, as a result of which the gases CO2, CO, H2, CH4, N2 and NO are first formed, which again interact with each other to release huge amount warmth. The final reaction can be expressed by the formula: 2C3H5(NO3)3 = 6CO2 + 5H2O + 3N + 0.5O2.

Heated to enormous temperatures, these gases rapidly expand, affecting environment colossal pressure. The end products of the explosion are completely harmless. All this seemed to make nitroglycerin indispensable in underground blasting. But it soon turned out that the manufacture, storage and transportation of this liquid explosive is fraught with many dangers.

In general, pure nitroglycerin is quite difficult to ignite from an open flame. The ignited rotten flame burned in it without any consequences. But its sensitivity to shocks and shocks (detonation) was many times higher than that of black powder. When an impact, often quite insignificant, occurred in the layers subjected to shaking, rapid rise temperature before the start of the explosive reaction. The mini-explosion of the first layers produced new blow to deeper layers, and this continued until the entire mass of matter exploded.

Sometimes, without any external influence, nitroglycerin suddenly began to decompose into organic acids, quickly darkened, and then the slightest shaking of the bottle was enough to cause a terrible explosion. After a number of accidents, the use of nitroglycerin was almost universally banned. Those industrialists who started producing this explosive had two options - either find a condition in which nitroglycerin would be less sensitive to detonation, or curtail their production.

One of the first to become interested in nitroglycerin was the Swedish engineer Alfred Nobel, who founded a plant for its production. In 1864, his factory was blown up along with its workers. Five people died, including Alfred's brother Emil, who was barely 20 years old. After this disaster, Nobel faced significant losses - it was not easy to convince people to invest money in such a dangerous enterprise.

For several years he studied the properties of nitroglycerin and eventually managed to establish its completely safe production. But the problem of transportation remained. After many experiments, Nobel found that nitroglycerin dissolved in alcohol is less sensitive to detonation. However, this method did not provide complete reliability. The search continued, and then an unexpected incident helped brilliantly solve the problem.

When transporting bottles with nitroglycerin, in order to soften the shaking, they were placed in kieselguhr - a special infusor earth mined in Hanover. Diatomaceous earth consisted of flint shells of algae with many cavities and tubules. And then one day, during shipment, one bottle of nitroglycerin broke and its contents spilled onto the ground. Nobel had the idea to carry out several experiments with this diatomaceous earth impregnated with nitroglycerin.

It turned out that the explosive properties of nitroglycerin did not decrease at all due to the fact that it was absorbed by porous earth, but its sensitivity to detonation decreased several times. In this state, it did not explode either from friction, or from a weak impact, or from combustion. But when a small amount of mercury fulminate was ignited in a metal capsule, an explosion occurred with the same force as pure nitroglycerin in the same volume. In other words, it was exactly what was needed, and even much more than what Nobel hoped to get. In 1867, he took out a patent for the compound he discovered, which he called dynamite.

The explosive force of dynamite is as enormous as that of nitroglycerin: 1 kg of dynamite in 1/50,000 of a second develops a force of 1,000,000 kgm, that is, sufficient to lift 1,000,000 kg by 1 m. Moreover, if 1 kg of black powder turned into gas in 0.01 seconds, then 1 kg of dynamite - in 0.00002 seconds. But with all this, high-quality dynamite exploded only from very strong blow. Lit by the touch of fire, it gradually burned without an explosion, with a bluish flame.

The explosion occurred only upon ignition large mass dynamite (more than 25 kg). Dynamite, like nitroglycerin, was best detonated by detonation. For this purpose, Nobel, in the same 1867, invented a combustible capsule detonator. Dynamite immediately found wide application in the construction of highways, tunnels, canals, railways and other objects, which largely predetermined the rapid growth of the fortune of its inventor. Nobel founded the first factory for the production of dynamite in France, then he established its production in Germany and England. Over thirty years, the dynamite trade brought Nobel enormous wealth - about 35 million crowns.

The process of making dynamite came down to several operations. First of all, it was necessary to obtain nitroglycerin. This was the most difficult and dangerous moment in the entire production. The nitration reaction occurred when 1 part glycerol was treated with three parts concentrated nitric acid in the presence of 6 parts concentrated sulfuric acid. The equation had next view: C3H5(OH)3 + 3HNO3 = C3H5(NO3)3 + 3H2O.

Sulfuric acid did not participate in the compound, but its presence was necessary, firstly, to absorb the water released as a result of the reaction, which otherwise, diluting nitric acid, would thereby prevent the completeness of the reaction, and, secondly, to release the resulting nitroglycerin from a solution in nitric acid, since it, being highly soluble in this acid, did not dissolve in its mixture with sulfuric acid.

Nitration was accompanied by a strong release of heat. Moreover, if, as a result of heating, the temperature of the mixture rose above 50 degrees, then the course of the reaction would go in the other direction - oxidation of nitroglycerin would begin, accompanied by the rapid release of nitrogen oxides and even greater heating, which would lead to an explosion.

Therefore, nitration had to be carried out with constant cooling of the mixture of acids and glycerin, adding the latter little by little and constantly stirring each portion. Nitroglycerin, formed directly upon contact with acids, having a lower density compared to the acidic mixture, floated to the surface and could be easily collected at the end of the reaction.

The preparation of the acid mixture at Nobel's factories took place in large cylindrical cast-iron vessels, from where the mixture entered the so-called nitration apparatus. In such an installation it was possible to process about 150 kg of glycerin at a time. By introducing the required amount of acid mixture and cooling it (passing cold compressed air and cold water through the coils) to 15-20 degrees, they began to spray cooled glycerin. At the same time, care was taken to ensure that the temperature in the apparatus did not rise above 30 degrees. If the temperature of the mixture began to rise rapidly and approached critical temperature, the contents of the vat could be quickly released into a large vessel of cold water.

The operation of producing nitroglycerin lasted about an hour and a half. After this, the mixture entered the separator - a lead quadrangular box with a conical bottom and two taps, one of which was located at the bottom and the other on the side. Once the mixture had settled and separated, the nitroglycerin was released through the top tap and the acid mixture through the bottom. The resulting nitroglycerin was washed several times to remove excess acids, since the acid could react with it and cause its decomposition, which inevitably led to an explosion.

To avoid this, water was added to a sealed vat with nitroglycerin and the mixture was stirred using compressed air. The acid dissolved in water, and since the densities of water and nitroglycerin were very different, then separating them from each other was not difficult. In order to remove residual water, nitroglycerin was passed through several layers of felt and table salt.

As a result of all these actions, an oily, yellowish, odorless, and very poisonous liquid was obtained (poisoning could occur either by inhaling the vapors or by contacting drops of nitroglycerin with the skin). When heated above 180 degrees, it exploded with terrible destructive force.

The prepared nitroglycerin was mixed with kieselguhr. Before this, the kieselguhr was washed and thoroughly crushed. Its impregnation with nitroglycerin occurred in wooden boxes lined with lead inside. After mixing with nitroglycerin, the dynamite was rubbed through a sieve and stuffed into parchment cartridges.

In kieselguhr dynamite, only nitroglycerin participated in the explosive reaction. Later Nobel came up with the idea of ​​impregnating with nitroglycerin various varieties gunpowder In this case, gunpowder also participated in the reaction and significantly increased the force of the explosion.