Chapter 57: America's Railroad Age

**SPEAKER_1** (0:04)
The History of North America podcast is a sweeping historical saga of the United States, Canada and Mexico, from their deep origins to our present epoch. Join me, Marc Vinet, on this exciting, fascinating, epic journey through time, focusing on the compelling, wonderful and tragic stories of North America's inhabitants, heroes, villains, leaders, environment and geography. The History of North America podcast series is an incredible historical adventure that chronicles the thrilling, action-packed tale of a continent.
I invite you to come along for the ride.

**Dave Broker** (0:51)
Around the world today, alarm bells are ringing about the growing momentum of nationalistic authoritarian regimes. We've seen them pop up in just about every region of the globe. Among them have been the governments of Vladimir Putin in Russia and Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. Independent journalists have come under particular scrutiny in these countries, as well as in others. And that's why, late last year, one Russian journalist, Dmitry Muratov, and one Filipino journalist, Maria Reza, traveled to Oslo. There, for their scrutiny of their respective governments, they were awarded the 102nd Nobel Peace Prize. Beginning in 1901, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has awarded this prize each year, or most years anyway, to persons who, quote, have done the most or best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses, end quote.
At least those are the criteria for the prize, as described in The Last Will and Testament of its namesake, the Swedish scientist and industrialist Alfred Bernard Nobel.
Born in Stockholm in 1833, Alfred Nobel was the son of a bankrupt engineer, who would move to Finland and then Russia, in an attempt to turn his fortunes around. The family's prospects improved when Nobel's father pulled him out of school, and moved the family to St. Petersburg, where he was working on various new inventions and machines. Among other things, he would go on to supply the czar the sea mines used to keep the British and French navies out of the Gulf of Finland during the Crimean War. Shout out Chapter 52 Young Alfred was then able to receive a world-class education, and in time he was sent around the world to broaden his horizons. Though he was interested in all sorts of subjects, especially English literature and poetry, Nobel's family steered him toward chemistry and physics. He decided to settle in Paris and took up work in a laboratory, where he met a young Italian chemist named Ascanio Sobrero. Just a few years earlier, in 1847, Sobrero had synthesized a new chemical compound called nitroglycerin. It was a dangerous liquid that, if handled correctly, could finally replace gunpowder as the world's best explosive material. But Sobrero also discovered, handling nitroglycerin safely was easier said than done. Nevertheless, Nobel saw great potential in it. In 1863, he returned to Stockholm to further develop nitroglycerin as a practical explosive. But Nobel was set back by several accidental explosions, one of which took several lives, including that of his brother Emil. City authorities then decided to ban the experimentation of nitroglycerin, forcing Nobel to move his operations to a barge unlike Millarin. There he began mass producing the substance and experimenting with additives. When he mixed nitroglycerin with diatomaceous earth, a soft rock powder, he was able to turn it into a paste, which he could shape into rods. In 1867, he patented this new material as dynamite.
The irony that the inventor of dynamite would be the creator of the Nobel Peace Prize is seldom lost on anyone. You see, Nobel was always interested in the work of peace activists, and he struggled with the contradiction of trying to promote their goals while also developing new explosives, some of which he was selling to various militaries.
Much like our old friend from way back in Chapter 18, the Quaker arms manufacturer, Samuel Goulton Jr. Nobel was not easily able to reconcile his personal beliefs with his economic endeavors. This is likely the reason he included the Peace Prize along with the prizes for accomplishments in literature, medicine, physics and chemistry in his will.
But while there were certainly violent applications for Nobel's inventions, there were many peaceful, industrial ones too. And ultimately, it was these applications that would make him such a wealthy and important historical figure, and why he's featured in our story today.
Remember how in Chapter 34 I told you about Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Great Western Railway needing to dig the 1.75 mile box tunnel? For three years, they blasted away with about one ton of gunpowder per week, killing a hundred workers in the process. Or if you heard the Chapter 31 bonus episode at the California State Railroad Museum, you may remember how the Chinese immigrant laborers for the Central Pacific Railroad had to dig 16 tunnels through the solid granite of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. And to do it, they needed to hammer drills into the mountain face and then fill the holes they made with gunpowder every day using as many as 500 kegs of the stuff and only making inches of progress. And we'll never even know how many of them died in this work.