On May 5, 1866, a reporter for the New York Times confessed to “some little trepidation” as he headed off to attend a demonstration at a rock quarry. A “professor” would attempt to show that a liquid widely considered to be one of the most dangerous substances on earth was in fact a benign and useful explosive if properly handled. The audience edged backward as the demonstrator poured some of the oily fluid onto a rock and lit it with a match, causing it to “burn like pitch, but not explode.” They cringed as he dropped a vial from a height to show that it would not explode accidentally. When he purposely set off a small quantity of the liquid, all were startled by the “tremendous report.”

The “professor” was Alfred Nobel. The 33-year-old Swedish engineer was promoting what the reporter described as “that cheerful compound ordinarily recognized as nitro-glycerine.” Nobel had begun to ship this “blasting oil” two years earlier. It was the first new commercial explosive since engineers had begun to use traditional gunpowder in mines in the seventeenth century. Orders had poured in from all over the world. America was the most promising market of all; breakneck industrial growth, especially the spread of railroads, had created an urgent need for an explosive that could muscle through hard rock.

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