Perhaps Alfred Nobel's greatest invention was dynamite, a combination of nitroglycerine and a soft, white, porous substance called kieselguhr. The demand for the new explosive was ‘overwhelming’ and Nobel built factories in some twelve countries. In England, the Nitroglycerine Act forbade ‘the manufacture, import, sale and transport of nitroglycerine and any substance containing it’. Nobel was not put off, but did clash with Frederick Abel who was trying to do at Woolwich Arsenal, with nitrocellulose, what Nobel was attempting with nitroglycerine. The net result was that Nobel failed to raise the money he needed for a factory in England.
Fortunately for him, Scotland, with its separate legal system, welcomed him and a factory, his first joint venture The British Dynamite Co. Ltd, was built at Ardeer on a desolate area of the Ayrshire coast in 1871.7 Nobel’s fellow investor in the British Dynamite Company was Sir Charles Tennant, the British champion, through his company Tennants of Glasgow, of the Leblanc process for producing soda ash.
Nobel is quoted as saying, ‘the real era of nitroglycerine opened with the year 1864 when a charge of pure nitroglycerine was first set off by means of a minute charge of gunpowder’. This was the first High Explosive, whereas rapid burning gun powder produces pressures of up to 6,000 atmospheres in a matter of milliseconds, the decomposition of nitroglycerine needs only microseconds and can give rise to pressures of up to 275,000 atmospheres. This was a ground breaking discovery that had the potential to make the life of the miner and civil engineer a great deal easier, but also to unleash weapons of previously unimagined ferocity.
It was not long before the next major development, the invention of cordite, again with Nobel and Abel vying for position. By the end of the nineteenth century, cordite was being manufactured by Kynoch & Co and by the National Explosives Company as well by Nobel’s factory at Ardeer.
The First World War witnessed the production of explosives on an unimaginable scale.
In the wake of the First World War, Harry McGowan headed up Explosive Trades Limited which brought together Britain's fifty-four explosives companies with ninety-three factories. In 1920 it changed its name to Nobel Industries Limited and proceeded to close and repurpose factories leaving it with explosive production at Ardeer, fuses in Cornwall and ammunition in Birmingham. It had substantial reserves which it sought to invest in promising industries. In 1926 it was a founder company of ICI.
W.J. Reader, Imperial Chemical Industries - Vol 1 the Forerunners 1870-1926 (London: Oxford University Press, 1970)
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