It was around this time that the project for a Gotthard railway tunnel linking the northern part of Switzerland with the Italian part became a reality. In 1872 the chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite and later founder of the Nobel Prize, established a new dynamite factory on the peninsula of Isleten. The new company prospered, and tons and tons of dynamite were used during the project to blast the tunnel, which ultimately was 15 km long.
