Back when i was a little kid in the mid 60's my dad had to make a whole bunch of business trips to detroit.
Seems they were trying to make a device that would expand like a balloon and keep the driver of a car from hitting the steering wheel or windshield in a crash, but the only problem was that it expanded so fast it would literally kill anyone near it.
They called in several top explosives R&D experts to develop a low explosive that was controllable, stable over a long time, and would be predictable and safe.
At the time he was the top explosives engineer at a company called Hercules.
After about a year his solution was ready to present, but ultimately his company did not get the contract.
His explosive solution would have cost about $5 dollars per car so they chose another product that was half the price even though it's predicted useful life was shorter.
Later they found that what they had was still too powerful and had to be dumbed down several times.
That's all I remember him telling me about it.
