Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged. Later, wood pulp was substituted as the absorbent, and sodium nitrate was added as an oxidizing agent to increase the strength of the explosive. ThoughtCo uses cookies to provide you with a great user experience. In 1865, he built the Alfred Nobel & Co. You may know Alfred Nobel invented dynamite, and left his fortune to start the Nobel Prizes. It is rated by either "weight strength" (the amount of ammonium nitrate in the medium) or "cartridge strength" (the potential explosive strength generated by an amount of explosive of a certain density and grain size used in comparison to the explosive strength generated by an equivalent density and grain size of a standard explosive). This page was last edited on 23 August 2020, at 11:50. The explosives factory was later operated by AECI (African Explosives and Chemical Industries). For other uses, see, US Patent 234489 issued to Morse 16 November 1880, "dynamite." [13] As such, more than 90% of the TNT produced in America was always for the military market, with most filling shells, hand grenades and aerial bombs and the remainder being packaged in brown "bricks" (not red cylinders) for use as demolition charges by combat engineers. Dynamite was invented by Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel in the 1860s and was the first safely manageable explosive stronger than black powder. In the United States, in 1885, the chemist Russell S. Penniman invented "ammonium dynamite", a form of explosive that used ammonium nitrate as a substitute for the more costly nitroglycerin. In total, Alfred Nobel held 355 patents in the fields of electrochemistry, optics, biology, and physiology. After some bad business deals in Sweden, in 1838 Immanuel moved his family to Saint Petersburg, where Alfred and his brothers were educated privately under Swedish and Russian tutors. In 1864, Albert Nobel founded Nitroglycerin AB in Stockholm, Sweden. Shock resistance tests are usually carried out with a drop-hammer: about 100 mg of explosive is placed on an anvil, upon which a weight of between 0.5 and 10 kilograms (1.1 and 22.0 lb) is dropped from different heights until detonation is achieved. [14] Military dynamite substitutes much more stable chemicals for nitroglycerin.[15]. But here are three things you might not know about his invention. It was invented by the Swedish chemist and engineer Alfred Nobel in Geesthacht, Northern Germany and patented in 1867. 2003. Carlos López Jimeno, Emilio López Jimeno, Francisco Javier Ayala-Carcedo, Swedish National Museum of Science and Technology, http://www.thefreedictionary.com/dynamite, "Austin Powder Guide, Dynamite series page 2", "The Federal Reporter with Key-Number Annotations, Volume 188: Cases Argued and Determined in the Circuit Courts of Appeals and Circuit and District Courts of the United States, August-October, 1911", "Unexploded Ordnance Information: Ordnance Fillers", Oregon State Police – Arson and Explosives Section (Handling instructions and photos), https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dynamite&oldid=974498133, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles containing Ancient Greek (to 1453)-language text, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.