This book examines the 1894 patent infringement trial between Alfred Nobel and British government scientists Frederick Abel and James Dewar over the invention of smokeless explosives. Drawing on trial records, archival materials, and press coverage, the book explores the scientific, legal, and personal dimensions of the dispute surrounding Nobel’s Ballistite and the government’s Cordite. The case highlights tensions between private inventors and state-employed scientists, and raises enduring questions about intellectual property, scientific ethics, and conflict of interest. It also situates the trial within broader developments in nineteenth-century chemistry, military technology, and patent law. Nobel’s defeat, and his subsequent founding of the Nobel Prizes, mark a poignant conclusion to a career shaped by innovation and controversy. This study will appeal to scholars and students of the history of science, chemistry, and law.

Seymour H. Mauskopf is Emeritus Professor at Duke University, USA. He is a historian of science, with publications both in the history of chemistry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and in the history of unconventional science.

Seymour's daughter, Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis, is the Donald A. Rogers Professor of History at Indiana University Bloomington, USA, and a historian of early medieval Europe and the Mediterranean. She has assisted with the publication of her father's book.