by Ragnhild Lundström Introduction For hundreds of years, black powder was the only explosive available for civilian as well as military purposes. Alfred Nobel’s invention of the detonator ensured a controlled explosion of nitroglycerine and made it possible to introduce this much stronger explosive on the civilian explosives market. His second important invention, dynamite,…

Introduction Alfred Nobel (1833-1896) – scientist, author and pacifist, but above all the inventor of dynamite and holder of 355 patents – shaped as a human being in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the Russian capital where different nationalities and cultures mixed and where science and literature developed in a dynamic interaction between Western European tradition…

by Nils Ringertz In his of November 27, 1895, Alfred Nobel specified that the bulk of his estate should be deposited in a fund, the interest of which should be divided into five parts and to be used for Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Literature and Peace. One of the five shares should be given to…

The factory at Vinterviken was destroyed more than once by terrible explosions. Sketch by R. Haglund.

A captain in the Naval Engineering Corps, engineer and businessman. Together with , he put up the capital for the formation of Nitroglycerin Aktiebolaget. He and Captain J. A. Berg were owners of Wennerström & Berg, engaged in stonecutting and similar operations “for which prisoners assigned to hard labor may be used, in accordance with…

Alfred Nobel’s youngest brother Emil, killed in the explosion at Heleneborg in 1864.

The Detonics Research Laboratory around 1963. Copyright © Nitro Nobel

Heleneborg – after the explosion in 1864.  

The Salpeter factory. A drawing by Olle Rydberg (above) and a recently taken picture (below).

by Birgitta Lemmel The explosives plant at Vinterviken (Winter Bay) just outside Stockholm, Nitroglycerin Aktiebolaget, was Alfred Nobel’s very first company. The manufacture of nitroglycerine on an industrial scale started there as early as 1865, and for more than fifty years the Vinterviken factory was to deliver Nobel explosives and blasting devices of various kinds…