Alfred Nobel was born in Stockholm, Sweden, on 21 October 1833. He was the fifth child of Immanuel Nobel, a chemist and engineer, and Anna Beata Lagerkvist. He was educated at home until age 15, when he began attending the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. After graduation in 1854 he worked for four years at an ironworks before leaving for Paris to further his education
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At that time there were no universities in Sweden, so Nobel studied privately for several more years. In 1864 he returned to Sweden and spent the next six years working for his father's firm, earning a modest income from investments made on his behalf by his father. He also helped manage the family's ironworks.
Nobel made his first invention in 1866 while working at the ironworks -- a process for manufacturing phosphorus matches.
The patent he obtained in the course of this work was assigned to him by his father, who detested him because of his strong personality and independent nature.
In 1868 Nobel invented a light-sensitive explosive that he called "detonator" (which is now known as guncotton or nitroglycerin). At that time many people believed that nitroglycerin could be used as a powerful explosive but not as a propellant and could not be detonated by heat (they thought it necessary to use a shock wave). The detonator also involved special safety precautions because it might explode even though it had been accidentally dropped or mishandled.
Nobel was aware of these dangers and had safety instructions printed with the patent application; nevertheless, the patent was rejected by both Swedish and U.S. authorities as unsafe because it might explode (this is known as "unobtanium" or "unkindness").
Nobel's Detonator succeeded only in hardening his father's heart against him and made him determined to find some other means to establish himself financially. In 1870 Nobel submitted another application for a patent covering explosives and received another rejection from Swedish authorities who were afraid of its potential military uses.
The same year he sold an improved detonator to the U.S., which granted him one-quarter of all profits from its sale during its first three years on the market -- $10,000 (about $3,100,000 today).
In 1872 Nobel became interested in nitroglycerin again but failed to interest others in its commercial possibilities until 1878 when Charles Hall, Jr., an