A highly volatile explosive, nitroglycerin was first produced by Italian chemist Ascanio Sobrero (1812-1888) in 1847. At about the same time German-Swiss professor Christian Schönbein discovered guncotton. Both inventions, given their high degree and speed of detonation, had the potential to immediately replace gunpowder as the chief military and commercial explosive. (Nitroglycerin's speed of explosion, for example, proved to be 25 times faster than that of gunpowder.)

Sobrero, guided by scientific curiosity rather than military interests, found that by combining a commonly used skin lotion, glycerol, with nitric acid and sulfuric acid, a colorless, oily liquid of enormous power resulted. However, the grim potential of his discovery so frightened him that he refused to publish his findings for nearly a year and then almost in secret. Consequently, nitroglycerin went largely unnoticed for many years, while the manufacture and use of guncotton, despite several notorious accidents, spread throughout Europe...