I’m grew up in Charleston, WV. We had an adjacent town called “Nitro.” During WW1 armaments for the war were manufactured in Nitro. There are photographs of concrete towers spaced apart from one another to manufacture Nitro Glycerin. They were approximately 75 feet high. The interesting thing about these towers is they had giant slicky slides from the tops to the ground for a quick escape for the employees.

Long ago, movie film was made of nitrocellulose, which was so flammable that it was resposable for burning down movie theaters. For this reason, the interiors of projection rooms were covered with metal and used many  methods of fire protection. This also caused fires in many film vaults until the development of cellulose acetate which was not very flamable. This might be a subject for another video.
Thanks for this one.
-Gabriel of Norway.

You have to hand it to Nobel, he was tenacious. He knew he was creating something useful for humanity, despite the tragic setbacks he kept solving the problems and moving forward.

One of my relatives, Silas Reynolds Divine, invented an explosive called Rackarock, a mixture of potassium chlorate and nitrobenze in 1881. It was used to blast a channel through The Hells Gate, a section of the East River in New York City that was basically unnavigable until that time.

Sometimes progress is a double edged sword

Alfred Nobel, one of the greatest chemist ever, saw his invention through to its massive contribution to humanity. What a story!

Very interesting. Never heard the entire story of Mr. Nobel. Very intesting

As a chemist, I am still in awe of the fact that 1800s chemists had to provide a taste description of every new compound that they synthesized. WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE HOW TOXIC IT IS. This is the reason why Sobrero taste tested his new compound and immediately got the splitting headache.
There is a similarly dangerous liquid oily compound that causes massive headaches that decomposes violently. It is called Nitrogen trichloride and it you know its exact smell - all swimming pools smell of it. It is generated in traces by the chlorinating agents and the urea compound in the urine that spills into the pool water.
You didn't know? Now you know...  😂😂😂

An excellent informative video and soundtrack. Nobell's model of focussed hard work generating huge wealth from a product and its continuing development, then donating virtually all the proceeds in an altruistic move aimed at challenging and rewarding brilliant people who followed him is an example that one or two multi-billionaires may be following today.

Nobel was simply one of humanity's  best.

He invented dynamite. They named the Nobel prize after him.

Late to the party, as usual. Back in the early 70's, I was at a friends house. His step father was in EOD during the Korean war era. He was a blast man on the construction crew he worked on. Anyway, I was over one afternoon and his mom started screaming Sam's name, and she was losing her mind. Apparently, Sam had put a case of full sticks and a case of half sticks of dynamite in their bedroom closet, and it was sweating. Jeff, my friend, ran his hand down one of the sticks, and flipped the droplets off his hand. Little blue flames with little sharp reports with each. We got to go fishing that weekend without fishing rods, only landing nets. I believe the dam face cracks were caused by that weekend.

Best movie about the stuff: "Le Salaire de la Peur" - "Wages of Fear" with Yves Montant, an awesome French film centered around NG transport.

A friend of mine worked in a plant making nitroglycerine, somewhere near Buffalo in the early 1950's. His department used small amounts, probably for medicine, although he did not happen to confirm that detail. One person would go to the area where it was stored, carrying a glass jug in a rubber bucket. As he traveled along the hallways and stairs, he would unroll two yellow ribbons. Returning to his work area, he would walk between the ribbons. After that, he would go back and take up the ribbons and put them away. Nobody stepped over the ribbons into the private passageway for the courier. Apparently they did think it was dangerous. It would not have blown up the world, or even the city, but it would have been the end of the world for the courier and anyone nearby, if they had been not quite careful enough. Now, of course, we are living Nobel's dream: we have a weapon so terrible that nobody has ever used one to attack a country that owned any of them - so far. Nobody knows for sure whether Iran will use a fission bomb if they can build one, but we do know they have already killed quite a few Americans - and achieved control over a lot of the Middle East, with conventional weapons and tactics. And they may not have any full-scale ICBM's, but, the USA did not need any ICBM's in 1945 either. 😈

I'd like to get a T-shirt made with the following on it:  "I enjoy the recreational use of nitric esters of polyhydric alcohols.  It's a real BLAST!"

A careless bastard brought a bottle of nitroglycerin to school - scared the crap out of everyone!

When I was a Kid , Nitro was where it was at , Providing you knew how to handle it .

VERY INFORMATIVE!!!!!!! THANK YOU!!!

Nitroglycerin, like all things, is  merely a tool. Mankind uses tools and they serve mankind or harm it.  It is mankind that makes that choice. Not the tool.

Thanks!