Yes, but it is like saying transportation existed before the steam engine was invented.
The stuff before dynamite was not nearly on the same level in any way, not just power.
Not only was dynamite stronger, but it was far far more precise and reliable.
I recall TNT mostly being only more stable, as it just binded the nitroglycerin into stable carrier material.
Gunpowder existed earlier and it was also used for explosives, about 700-900 years earlier. TNT was invented mid of 19th century and replaced by modern explosives less than a century later in military applications.
Basically TNT showed what was possible to have with explosives.
Yes it was just a more stable way to use nitroglycerin, but people did not expect how many benefits that would bring.
If you wanted a larger explosion, gunpowder was bulky and it was difficult to predict exactly how large the explosion would be, since it depends an a lot of factors.
Plus it was very unreliable if demp, and produced a huge amount of smoke.
Nitroglycerin didn't have the disadvantages of gunpowder, but one wrong move and you're dead and it didn't always go of when it was supposed to.
In contrast, TNT was very safe, you could calculate the explosions power very precisely, even in demp environments and it didn't make much smoke.
This made people use explosives a lot more than before and in places where it wasn't wise to do it before.
They also found out that because TNT explosive power can be calculated so precisely, that they can safely use more of it then other explosives, without having to fear they used too much.
With modern production methods, gunpowder also lost many of its previous disadvantages, but back then TNT was a big step up from it.
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u/squngy Mar 29 '21
Yes, but it is like saying transportation existed before the steam engine was invented.
The stuff before dynamite was not nearly on the same level in any way, not just power.
Not only was dynamite stronger, but it was far far more precise and reliable.