George M. Mowbray

author

George M. Mowbray

A 19th-century chemist and explosives expert, he wrote a firsthand account of how tri-nitro-glycerine was used in major engineering work like the Hoosac Tunnel. His writing opens a window onto an era when science, industry, and danger were closely tied together.

1 Audiobook

Tri-nitro-glycerine, as Applied in the Hoosac Tunnel, Submarine Blasting, etc., etc., etc.

Tri-nitro-glycerine, as Applied in the Hoosac Tunnel, Submarine Blasting, etc., etc., etc.

by George M. Mowbray

About the author

George M. Mowbray is best remembered for Tri-nitro-glycerine, as Applied in the Hoosac Tunnel, Submarine Blasting, etc., etc., etc., a work now preserved by Project Gutenberg. The book draws on his own experience and explains how nitro-glycerine was manufactured and used for blasting in the late 1800s.

Historical material about the Hoosac Tunnel identifies him as a key figure in bringing tri-nitro-glycerine into that massive Massachusetts construction project. It also notes that he had already become known in the Pennsylvania oil fields, where his improved blasting methods were used to increase production from slow wells.

What makes Mowbray interesting today is that he wrote from inside a world most people only read about from a safe distance: dangerous chemicals, industrial experimentation, and large-scale public works. His surviving book offers both technical detail and a vivid sense of the risks and ambitions of 19th-century engineering.