alfred nobel - he invented the nobel peace prize because he didn't want his legacy to be being remembered as the inventor of dynamite and profiting from arms sales.
Like many technologies, dynamite is a two edged sword. All in all, I'd wage it had much more civilian applications than military ones. And Nobel invented it because of the large numbers of _civilian_ workers being killed or injured in nitroglycerin accidents.
IMHO, smokeless powder is, compared to dynamite, _the_ military invention of the time.
This is why we need more ethics in engineering. If you spend all your life selling arms, you shouldn't be able to use your immense wealth just before you die to change your legacy. "Move fast and break thing". "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission."
ethelward|7 years ago
IMHO, smokeless powder is, compared to dynamite, _the_ military invention of the time.
gnulinux|7 years ago