Immanuel Nobel

Who was Immanuel Nobel?

Immanuel Nobel, the younger, was a Swedish engineer, architect, inventor and industrialist. He was the inventor of the rotary lathe used in plywood manufacturing. He was a member of the Nobel family and the father of Robert Nobel, Ludvig Nobel and Alfred Nobel. He also often experimented with nitroglycerin with his sons, which led to his son, Emil Oskar Nobel's, death because of an explosion at his father's factory Heleneborg in Stockholm in 1864.

Nobel moved to Russia from Sweden in 1838, to sell his inventions in St. Petersburg, where he lived for two decades with his family. Among his successful creations was an improved version of an underwater exploding mine that personally interested Tsar Nicholas I of Russia. Immanuel founded a war supplies factory, Fonderies et Ateliers Mécaniques Nobel Fils, which turned out to be a very profitable business. However, the death of Nicholas I in 1855 and the end of the Crimean War in 1856 brought about a shift in Russian policies and the new Tsar Alexander II ordered a severe cut in the military budget that eventually placed Immanuel's company in serious economic difficulties.