Oscar Guttmann died on August 2nd, 1910, in Brussels, as the result of a taxi-cab collision.
Born on February 24th, 1855, at Nagy-Becskerck, in Hungary, he began his active career in scientific journalism in 1878, as editor of Der Bergmann, and for ten years subsequently as editor of Berg- und Hűtten-Kalender, an Austro-Hungarian mining journal. During the same period, from 1878 to 1887, he was engaged in the manufacture of dynamite and other explosives in Austria-Hungary and Italy.
In 1887 he settled in London as a consulting engineer and chemical adviser, especially in regard to the manufacture of explosives, and became a naturalised British subject in 1894. He designed and erected the National Explosives Co.’s works, at Hayle, Cornwall, and later the Acetone works at Waltham Abbey, Woolwich, Clapton and Manchester; he was also commissioned to erect the testing station for explosives in Reichenstein, Germany.
At the date of his death he was actively engaged as a juror of the Brussels Exhibition of 1910. Mr. Guttmann was the author of many books and papers dealing chiefly with explosives, among which may be mentioned “Blasting” (1902, 2nd edition 1906), “Manufacture of Explosives” (1895, also published in German), and a series of Cantor Lectures on “The Manufacture of Explosives: Twenty Years of Progress,” delivered before the Royal Society of Arts in 1908. He also devoted a considerable amount of time and labour to historical research in, the explosives industry, and in 1906 published “Monumenta Pulveris Pyrii,” embodying the results of these labours. He was a Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and a Fellow, and for some years Vice-President, of the Institute of Chemistry of Great Britain and Ireland.
Mr. Guttmann was elected a Member of the Institution in 1908.
Vol. 20 Trans IMM 1910-11, pp.522-3
