Dynamite

Author: Nicholas Stubblefield Edited by: Nora Lewis and Txai Sibley

Suggested Citation:

Stubblefield, N., Lewis, N., Sibley, T. (2026). Dynamite. Technology Assessment Project Case Study Library, University of Michigan. https://stpp.fordschool.umich.edu/tap-case-study-library/dynamite

Dynamite

Key Takeaways

• Decentralized and high-risk technologies, particularly when seen as a safer replacement to older technological iterations, can be more vulnerable to dual-use.
• Decentralized technologies can serve to intensify capital and industrial expansion and drive geopolitical power grabs.

Taming the Fire: Stabilizing Nitroglycerin

In 1967, Alfred Nobel patented dynamite in the hopes it would make work with explosives safer and more widespread (The Nobel Foundation, n.d.). Prior to dynamite's invention, laborers used black powder and nitroglycerin for demolition work. Nitroglycerin, an oily liquid discovered in 1847 by Ascanio Sobrero, stored more potential explosive energy than black powder and soon superseded it as the preferred industrial explosive (Marsh & Marsh, 2000). Nitroglycerin worked wet, created less smoke, and burned through rock faster than black powder. Converting from black powder to Nitroglycerin increased daily tunnel excavation progress by 50 – 75% for some projects (PBS, n.d.-b). However, nitroglycerin was also highly unstable and could unpredictably detonate from mechanical shocks. Thus, transportation became a substantial if not prohibitive hurdle to global nitroglycerin adoption.

In April 1866, an unclaimed and unlabeled crate of nitroglycerin was left at a Wells Fargo in San Francisco. Freight inspectors discovered a leak from the crate and decided to investigate and open the box. The mechanical force used to open the crate detonated the nitroglycerin which destroyed the building and killed 15 people. In its aftermath, the local paper described a graphic scene of dirty rubble, shattered glass, and scattered human remains including severed arms and in-tact brains (Graves, n.d.). Two days later, another nitroglycerin explosion killed six workers on the Central Pacific Line railroad (Linda Hall Library, n.d.). California retaliated by confiscating private holdings of nitroglycerin and banning its in-state transportation (PBS, n.d.-b). The California accidents, as well as nitroglycerin explosions in Panama and Sydney, Australia that same year prompted several countries to ban nitroglycerin outright (Sabo & Andersson-Skog, 2017).

Where transportation was not banned, companies instituted strict rules on the shipment of nitroglycerin, limiting ground carriages to hard speed limits. When those limits were exceeded, harsh penalties were imposed (The New York Times, 1903). These severe but necessary rules placed major restrictions on project timelines and limited some work to the explosively inferior black powder. Some companies found partially remediating workarounds by building nitroglycerin factories on site (Linda Hall Library, n.d.).

Facilitating a Global Industrialization

Alfred Nobel produced and sold nitroglycerin, but these transportation and safety risks threatened his product's commercial success and hampered industrial projects. Personally, he had another stake. A nitroglycerin explosion killed his brother Emil at the family factory (Science History Institute, n.d.). To produce a more distributable product, Nobel soaked nitroglycerin in a silica called diatomaceous earth (Schwarcz, n.d.). The resulting combination created a stable and moldable clay that maintained nitroglycerin's explosive power, but with far less risk of unpredictable detonations. This clay could also be safely partitioned in discrete quantities, allowing for a variable explosive package customizable to different industrial needs. Packaged into a cylinder and attached to a blasting cap for remote detonations (also a Nobel invention), Nobel called his invention dynamite after the Greek word for power dynamis, and it transformed demolition work.

Mining work progressed at rapid new timelines with tunnels now excavated at a rate of many feet per day instead of a few feet or even inches (Bressan, 2016). Demolitions were conducted more safely and at varying scales. The relatively safe scalability of dynamite broadened the applications for explosives. In addition to the removal of large bulk, dynamite could be finely tuned for more delicate projects like sculpting. Laborers used dynamite to carve 90% of the Mt. Rushmore faces, and the construction of the monument suffered no fatal or serious casualties (Balogh, 2019). Unburdened by bans or demobilizing safety restrictions, dynamite provided "power-at-large," and the accessibility it unlocked made vast capital-driven industrial projects like the Panama Canal and the Hoover Dam possible (Bemis & Bagué, n.d.; National Endowment for the Humanities, n.d.). With dynamite, capitalist, global trade visions were able to expand.

Accessibility and Duality: Dynamite as a Weapon

Dynamite's intended transformation of professional explosive work did not preclude its use by other actors, and it lacked a regulatory oversight that would have more narrowly defined and enforced its use. Governments left such oversight solely to the discretion of private retailers and wholesalers. This laissez faire approach grew to frustrate some dynamite companies who complained anyone could walk in from the street, buy a case of dynamite, and walk away with no questions asked. A company manager in New York openly demanded new laws restricting who and how individuals could buy dynamite, "the law is at fault, not the powder men. Give us a law which we all must obey, and we shall be only too willing to follow it" (The New York Times, 1903). Without strictly enforced terms of use or specific technological framing, dynamite's broad availability and open-ended technology allowed any group or actor to define the explosive's purpose and expand its use. Alternative actors took advantage of dynamite's unregulated technology and presented new definitions for its use to a global public.

For oppressed laborers, particularly miners, dynamite had dual meaning. In their hands, it was both a tool catalyzing the rapid industrialization of the world and a weapon to fight back against the forces driving that industrialization. In Germany, a group of striking miners used dynamite to sabotage their employer's coal mine and equipment (The New York Times, 1893). Property wasn't the only target — disgruntled laborers used dynamite to murder political opponents, and the explosive's customizable dose allowed easy adaptation to either mass murder or individual assassinations. Dynamiter Harry Orchard used dynamite to kill 13 non-union miners at a train depot during a Colorado labor conflict. Later, the Western Federation of Miners, a US labor union, hired Orchard to kill former Idaho governor Steunenberg who had clashed with striking miners during his gubernatorial term (National Governors Association, 1977; Saelee, n.d.) . Orchard booby trapped the ex-governor's home gate with a dynamite bomb which detonated and killed Steunenberg when he returned home (The New York Times, 1905).

Nobel designed dynamite to improve working conditions around nitroglycerin. While dynamite succeeded in stabilizing the compound, it entered a labor dynamic rife with inequities, exploitation, and discontented workers. Its ubiquity, necessity, and power made it an obvious choice for those seeking to highlight workplace ills. Laborers entrusted with its use discovered they could leverage dynamite's explosive power to oppose other unfair workplace conditions, like work hours and wages. However, these dynamite tactics were always destructive and mostly punitive, with dynamite used to murder opponents not as redress but as revenge.

New Technological Frameworks: Dynamite as a Symbol

Easy and cheap to access, dynamite became the preferred weapon of late 19th and early 20th century anarchists in the US and Europe. Russia's anarchist group "The People's Will" appointed dynamite as their official weapon. An anarchist group in France went so far as to brand themselves with the explosive, coining their name "Les Dynamitards" (Keny, 2016). Dynamite was similarly embraced in the US. During Chicago's 1886 Haymarket Riot, a confrontation between the city's organized anarchists and police, an unknown anarchist assailant detonated a dynamite bomb among the police ranks (The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2012). Eight local known anarchists, none of whom had thrown the bomb, were charged with murder and sentenced to die (PBS, n.d.-a). Among them was Louis Ling, who used his trial as a platform to promote both his political beliefs and dynamite as the primary tool to spread them: "You perhaps think I will not use bombs anymore, but I tell you I die gladly upon the gallows in the sure hope that hundreds and thousands of people to whom I have spoken will now recognize and make use of dynamite" (Balogh, 2019).

For anarchists, dynamite was more than a weapon. It was a political symbol and a representation of class struggle. Its accessibility allowed workers, unions, and political revolutionaries to level the playing field against state and private oppression. In the words of historian Paul Avrich, dynamite was "a great equalizing force, enabling ordinary workmen to stand up against armies, militias, and police, to say nothing of the hired gunmen of the employers. Cheap in price, easy to carry, not hard to obtain, it was the poor man's natural weapon, a power provided by science against tyranny and oppression" (Cole, 2009).

Dynamite was fire power and political power rolled into one. Anarchists believed capitalism corrupted democracy and that elections were rigged by the moneyed elite (Hautzinger, 2020). Commenting on the political applications of dynamite, one European anarchist newspaper printed, "a pound of this good stuff beats a bushel of ballots" (Merriman, 2009). Dynamite, to anarchists, was a worthy and equitable substitute for the government institutions supposedly designed to serve the majority. Where elections and institutions perpetuated unjust economic hierarchies, dynamite did not discriminate against class. It empowered and emboldened individuals, though mostly to commit acts of terrorism. In a thirty-year period spanning across the 19th and 20th centuries, there were 7000 bombings in New York City alone, most of them politically motivated (Johnson, 2023).

So salient were these anarchist narratives and activities, they monopolized dynamite's own public image. Aetna, a dynamite company, released a now famous ad depicting not a demonstration of dynamite's accelerating role in industrialization but rather a revolutionary with political dress, flag, and the tool of his protest exploding in the background (Keny, 2016).

Thanks to its accessibility, striking workers, political radicals, and assassins had provided new definitions to the technology, transforming what dynamite could do as a techno-political tool. Attributable in part to a deregulated environment and a rapidly industrializing world that needed dynamite to be as universal as possible, Nobel's dynamite both fulfilled its role as a safe, accessible explosive and filled the pockets of domestic terrorists.

Relevance to Advanced Nuclear Energy

We chose dynamite as an example of a decentralized, dual-use technology. Dynamite exemplifies how the decentralization of a technology can both make it a more powerful driver of innovation and industry while simultaneously making it more vulnerable to dual-use exploitation. Advanced nuclear and dynamite are distinct in their regulatory environments, where dynamite was largely capable of being used for terrorism and political action because of poor regulation. However, dynamite, like advanced nuclear, was seen as being substantially safer than its predecessor, in part resulting in an inadequate regulatory environment.

Key References

Balogh, B. (2019). Blasts from the past. Backstory Radio.

Keny, T. (2016). Edward Penfield's Aetna Dynamite and the rise of the anarchic movement. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

References

Balogh, B. (2019). Blasts from the past. Backstory Radio.

Bemis, E. & Bagué, K. (n.d.). The digging is the least thing of all: Health & medicine at the Panama Canal. Exhibits at the University of Florida Libraries.

Bressan, D. (2016). How dynamite revolutionized tunnel excavations. Forbes.

Cole, S. (2009). Dynamite violence and literary culture. Modernism/Modernity, 16(2), 301–328.

Graves, G. J. (n.d.). Nitroglycerine! Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum.

Hautzinger, D. (2020, June 25). Chicago's "anarchist queen". WTTW Chicago.

Johnson, S. (2023, September 8). Introducing the infernal machine. Medium.

Keny, T. (2016). Edward Penfield's Aetna Dynamite and the rise of the anarchic movement. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Linda Hall Library. (n.d.). Black powder and nitroglycerin: The transcontinental railroad.

Marsh, N. & Marsh, A. (2000). A short history of nitroglycerine and nitric oxide in pharmacology and physiology. Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology & Physiology, 27(4), 313–319.

Merriman, J. (2009). The dynamite club: How a bombing in fin-de-siècle Paris ignited the age of modern terror.

National Endowment for the Humanities. (n.d.). Hoover Dam and the shaping of the American West.

National Governors Association. (1977, January 24). Frank Steunenberg.

PBS. (n.d.-a). Eight anarchists.

PBS. (n.d.-b). Nitroglycerin.

Sabo, J. & Andersson-Skog, L. (2017). Dynamite regulations: The explosives industry, regulatory capture and the Swedish government 1858–1948. International Advances in Economic Research, 23(2), 191–201.

Saelee, M. (n.d.). Coeur d'Alene mining insurrection: Topics in Chronicling America. Library of Congress.

Schwarcz, J. (n.d.). How dynamite spawned the Nobel Prizes. Office for Science and Society.

Science History Institute. (n.d.). Alfred Nobel.

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. (2012). Account of the Haymarket Riot.

The New York Times. (1893, January 15). Strikers use dynamite: A heavy explosion in a coal mine at Gelsenkirchen.

The New York Times. (1903, May 31). Easy to purchase dynamite.

The New York Times. (1905, December 31). Ex-governor killed by dynamite bomb.

The Nobel Foundation. (n.d.). Alfred Nobel's patents.

Photo: Poster advertisement for the Aetna Dynamite Company, circa 1895. Edward Penfield / U.S. Library of Congress.