The history of implosionworld.com dates back to 1970, when the core team at Protec Documentation Services first began documenting construction and demolition sites.

Although participating on "implosion" projects has always been interesting work, in the early years the photographic aspect was seen as little more than a challenging diversion from the more technical responsibilities of vibration monitoring and inspecting adjacent structures prior to a blast.

As Protec grew, the company continued to expand its reputation as an international leader in the fields of vibration prediction, monitoring, structure inspections, and perhaps equally as important, capturing the types of images that clearly illustrated how precise and dependable this form of demolition could be.

In 1996, Protec producers developed What A Blast, the first documentary to showcase a variety of blasting specialists performing world-class projects. The four-part series was then augmented by a spin-off of the firm's corporate website, titled Protec's World of Explosive Demolition, which was updated monthly with the latest structural blasting photographs and industry-related information.

The site began receiving inquiries and emails from around the globe, and it became obvious that this "industry showcase" would one day require its own dedicated forum.

Implosionworld.com, LLC was established as an independent corporation in October 1999, and premiered in grand style with the world's first real-time webcast of a building implosion project, live from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. From there, new site-related ideas and expansion projects literally flowed like tumbling debris (sorry), and included every type of web technology available: Streaming video, flash animation, more live webcasts - including links to other media outlets who were catching up - and several other forms of visual technology.

The site experienced an unprecedented surge in visitors at the turn of the century, thanks in part to being recognized on over 100 "Recommended Website" lists for design and content, including USA Today's Top Pick, Yahoo.com's Editors Choice and others (Implosionworld.com has never solicited for such accolades). Various international awards for photography also followed, and the site continued to see increases in visitors linking from dozens of the world's most prestigious engineering, architectural, historical and photographic web portals.

In late 2003, Implosionworld.com reached another milestone with the posting of its 500th page of content. The site currently contains over 1,000 images of projects performed in over 40 countries on six continents (in fact, you are reading the only page without a photograph).

Yet beyond all of the efforts to showcase the industry visually, implosionworld.com has never lost sight of the fact that reporting accurate information is essential to its purpose and remains the most important element of its existence. If one characteristic of explosive demolition has proven consistent over the years, it is that there never seems to be a shortage of "hype" around these projects, and the implosionworld.com team's goal has remained simple: To report timely, useful and factual information in a way that does justice to the blasting specialists worldwide who work diligently to keep structural blasting safe, while continuously experimenting with new ways to impress us all.

Brent Blanchard
Senior Writer
Implosionworld.com

site design by:
[High Radiation]