the blast factory
a notebook
"The Blast Factory" is an article published in Scientific American (June 1924) and I have a couple of queries. The article states that in 1923, the United States used up 326,000,000 pounds of dynamite. The author, H.E. Davis, describes the largest dynamite factory —allegedly— in the world and it was located, broadly, in the United States — no other specifics given. What or where was the world's biggest dynamite factory of the mid-1920's?
the earthly inputs for dynamite...
At "1,300 acres," according to Davis, it made everything from "ammonium nitrate and nitric and sulfuric acid," "paper shells and wooden boxes" to ship explosives, and included a complex of ammunition magazines, steam plants (I assume), rail lines, a lab for research and testing, "as well as seven complete units for the manufacture and packing of the various kinds of dynamite – straight nitroglycerin, ammonia, nitrostarch and gelatin."
The best guess would be the Hercules Powder Co. in Northern California, which was, according to CLUI, "the most productive TNT plant in the United States" by 1917 (no source cited). The plant frequently took the lives of workers, with at least 24 killed in 1908 alone.
the grief-inducing inputs
According to the article (and me guessing a little between the lines), the blast factory sourced materials from all over the world, importing sodium nitrate (saltpeter) from the Atacama desert, northern Chile, and wood pulp from Maine, as well as a variety of more materials from Louisiana. There is a lot to think about here because, to make dynamite (as opposed to the fickle "blasting oil" of yore), the key ingredient would have to be the "diatomaceous earth" (kieselguhr) that made Alfred Nobel rich and famous. Kieselguhr is nothing but the fossil remains of single-celled micro-algae used today in numerous industrial applications. How to articulate the conflagration of hundreds of millions of pounds of dynamite in a single year when what makes the explosive into something transportable and manageable (sort of), into a logistical thing, is a material so deceptively primitive, gifted by the oceans? Where can we locate, if anywhere, from the fragments of explosions, the multi-species entanglements of an aftermath, with the traces of the workers, fossils, algae, soils, and so much more in it?
archipelagic origins of dynamite and the bead workers of the Caroline Islands
The last question I have —if it is even a question at this point— has to do with the "fine meal" absorbent sourced from the Caroline Islands, north of Papua New Guinea, made with "ivory nut scraps" coming "via the button and bead makers who cut their wares from the center of the kernel and sell the scrap to the dynamite manufacturers," to which I was, like, what!? when I read that part. Who or what brought ivory nut meal into dynamite? Where can I read more about the colonization and trade between, presumably, California and the Micronesian islanders? How is the archipelagic already inscribed in the explosive and how is the explosive shaping the lives of islanders in the twentieth century, predating the displacement caused by testing nuclear weapons?
– j.a.h. | contact me at: javier at berkeley dot edu | https://lnk.bio/jah