Dynamit Nobel AG

Dynamite Nobel AG was a German chemical and weapons company whose headquarters was based in Troisdorf. It was founded in 1865 by Alfred Nobel.

Creation

After the death of his younger brother Emil in an 1864 nitroglycerin explosion at the family's armaments factory in Heleneborg, Stockholm, Nobel founded Nitroglycerin AB in Winterviken near Stockholm. A year later, having found some German business partners, he launched the Alfred Nobel & Company in Germany, building an isolated factory in the Krümmel hills of Geesthacht near Hamburg. This business exported a liquid combination of nitroglycerin and gunpowder known as "Blasting Oil", but it was extremely unstable and difficult to transport, as shown in numerous catastrophes. The buildings of the Krümmel factory itself were destroyed in 1866 and again in 1870. [ [http://nobelprize.org/alfred_nobel/industrial/articles/krummel/index.html NobelPrize.org: Krümmel] ]

In April 1866, the company shipped three unmarked crates of nitroglycerin to California for the Central Pacific Railroad, who wished to experiment with its blasting capability to speed the construction of a tunnel through the Sierra Nevada for the First Transcontinental Railroad. [" [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/tcrr/peopleevents/e_nitro.html Transcontinental Railroad - People & Events: Nitroglycerin] ", "American Experience", PBS] One of the crates exploded, destroying a Wells Fargo office in San Francisco and killing fifteen people, leading to a complete ban on the transport of liquid nitroglycerin in California.

Liquid nitroglycerin was widely banned elsewhere as well, and this finally led to Alfred Nobel & Company's development of dynamite in 1867, made by mixing the nitroglycerin with the diatomaceous earth ("kieselguhr") found in the Krümmel hills. Competitors mixed nitroglycerin with other inert absorbents in many different combinations were tried in order to get around Nobel's tightly controlled patents.

History of component companies and mergers

* 1865 Alfred Nobel & Co founded in Krümmel near Hamburg.
* 1866 United States Blasting Oil Company founded in the United States
* 1867 Nobel receives patent for dynamite
* 1871 British Dynamite Company founded in Ardeer, Scotland
* 1876 Nobel receives patents for gelignite
* 1876 Société Générale pour la Fabrication de la Dynamite founded in Paris, France
* 1876 Alfred Nobel & Co changes its name to Dynamitaktiengesellschaft (DAG)
* 1877 British Dynamite Company changes its name to Nobel's Explosives Company
* 1880 Dynamite Nobel formed by merging Italian and Swiss companies
* 1886 Nobel-Dynamite Trust Co formed by merging DAG and the Nobel's Explosives Company in the UK

Notes

References

* Bown, Stephen R. " [http://books.google.com/books?id=xA8nFacVagUC A Most Damnable Invention: Dynamite, Nitrates, and the Making of the Modern World] ". Macmillan, 2005 (ISBN 9780312329136)