Star Metro - Lost for 50 years, Nobel patents found in Swedish summer home

Nobel -- who discovered dynamite in 1867 and created the Nobel Prizes in his 1895 will -- had hundreds of patents in several countries, most of them concerning production methods and uses for explosives using nitroglycerin.

"We got a call from a person working at an auction place," the head of the Nobel Foundation, Hanna Stjarne, told AFP.

"He had these documents that came to him from a couple in the southern part of Sweden, in Blekinge, who found those documents in their summer home.

"We looked into it and saw that these are really documents of great importance that we want to keep for future generations."

It is not known how the patents ended up there, but they provide a unique glimpse into Nobel's life, Stjarne said.

"It was stunning to open these documents, to look at them, to get that feeling about what life must have been like 150 years ago, and how he travelled in Europe, how he worked in Europe."

Nobel was known as a globetrotter -- he was nicknamed "the richest vagabond in the world" -- who at various times in his life lived in Sweden, Russia, Germany, France, the United States, Britain and Italy.

In order to protect his patents and avoid having to transport dangerous nitroglycerin long distances, the inventor founded companies in various countries.

One of the patents from 1865 is of particular interest, Nobel Museum senior curator Ulf Larsson said.

It is "rare in the archive because it's a very early stage in Alfred Nobel's career as an inventor," he said.

"This is a patent from a crucial stage when he had invented the detonator and was moving forward towards dynamite."

S.Cloutier--SMC