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History of gunpowder

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Gunpowder was practically the only known propellant and explosive until the middle of the 19th century. It has largely been superseded by more efficient explosives such as smokeless powders and TNT. It is still manufactured today but primarily for use in fireworks, model rocket engines, and reproductions of muzzleloading weapons.

China

The prevailing academic consensus is that gunpowder was discovered in the 9th century by Chinese alchemists searching for an elixir of immortality. The discovery of gunpowder was probably the product of centuries of alchemical experimentation. Saltpetre was known to the Chinese by the mid-1st century AD and there is strong evidence of the use of saltpetre and sulphur in various largely medicinal combinations. A Chinese alchemical text from 492 noted that saltpeter gave off a purple flame when ignited, providing for the first time a practical and reliable means of distinguishing it from other inorganic salts, making it possible to evaluate and compare purification techniques; the earliest Arabic and Latin descriptions of the purification of saltpeter do not appear until the 1200s.

The first reference to gunpowder is probably a passage in the Zhenyuan miaodao yaolüe, a Taoist text tentatively dated to the mid-800s:

Some have heated together sulfur, realgar and saltpeter with honey; smoke and flames result, so that their hands and faces have been burnt, and even the whole house where they were working burned down.

The discovery of gunpowder in the 800s and the subsequent invention of firearms in the 1100s both coincided with long periods of disunity during which there was some immediate use for infantry and siege weapons. The years 904–6 saw the use of incendiary projectiles called 'flying fires' (fei-huo). Needham (1986) argues that gunpowder was first used in warfare in China in 919 to ignite another incendiary, Greek fire. The earliest depiction of a gunpowder weapon is the illustration of a fire-lance on a mid-10th century silk banner from Dunhuang. The fire-lance is the ancestor of both firearm and cannon. The oldest surviving firearm dates to no later than 1288, and Chase (2003) suggests that the earliest true firearms may date from as early as the first half of the 1100s.

The earliest surviving recipes for gunpowder can be found in the Wujing Zongyao of 1044, which contains three: two for use in incendiary bombs to be thrown by siege engines (48.5% saltpetre, 25.5% sulfur, 21.5% others; 50% saltpetre, 25% sulfur, 6.5% charcoal and 18.75% others) and one intended as fuel for poison smoke bombs (38.5% saltpetre, 19% sulfur, 6.4% charcoal and 35.85% others). Printed editions of this book were made from about 1488, and in 1608 a hand-copied edition was made.

The formulas in the Wujing zongyao range from 27 to 50 percent nitrate. Experimenting with different levels of saltpetre content eventually produced bombs, grenades, and mines, in addition to giving fire-arrows a new lease on life. By the end of the 12th century, there were cast-iron grenades filled with gunpowder formulations capable of bursting through their metal containers. The 14th century Huolongjing contains gunpowder recipes with nitrate levels ranging from 12% to 91%, six of which approach the theoretical composition for maximal explosive force. Zhang (1986) argues that the use of gunpowder in artillery as an explosive (as opposed to merely an incendiary) was made possible by improvements in the refinement of sulfur from pyrite during the Song Dynasty.

As early as the 11th century, the government of the Song Dynasty was concerned that foreign enemies might break its monopoly on gunpowder technology. The Song Shi of 1345 records that, in 1067, the Song government forbade the people of Hedong (modern-day Shanxi and Hebei) from selling to foreigners any form of sulfur or saltpetre. In 1076 the Song government went further, issuing a ban on all private commercial transactions involving saltpetre and sulfur for fear that they would be sold across borders and creating a government monopoly on their production and commercial distribution.

The origin of rocket propulsion is the 'ground-rat,' a type of firework whose use was recorded in 1264 when they frightened the Empress-Mother Kung Sheng at a feast held in her honor by her son the Emperor Lizong.

In China, the importance of safety measures has not always been appreciated. In 1260, the personal arsenal of Song Dynasty Prime Minister Zhao Nanchong caught fire and exploded, destroying several outlying houses and killing four of his prized pet tigers. The Gui Xin Za Zhi of 1295 records that a much bigger accident took place at Weiyang in 1280, at an arsenal used primarily for the storage of trebuchet-launched bombs:

Formerly the artisan positions were all held by southerners (i.e. the Chinese). But they engaged in speculation, so they had to be dismissed, and all their jobs were given to northerners (probably Mongols, or Chinese who had served them). Unfortunately, these men understood nothing of the handling of chemical substances. Suddenly, one day, while sulphur was being ground fine, it burst into flame, then the (stored) fire lances caught fire, and flashed hither and thither like frightened snakes. (At first) the workers thought it was funny, laughing and joking, but after a short time the fire got into the bomb store, and then there was a noise like a volcanic eruption and the holwing of a storm at sea. The whole city was terrified, thinking that an army was approaching...Even at a distance of a hundred li tiles shook and houses trembled...The disturbance lasted a whole day and night. After order had been restored an inspection was made, and it was found that a hundred men of the guards had been blown to bits, beams and pillars had been cleft asunder or carried away by the force of the explosion to a distance of over ten li. The smooth ground was scooped into craters and trenches more than ten feet deep. Above two hundred families living in the neighborhood were victims of this unexpected disaster.

After 1279, most guns taken from the major cities were kept by the Mongols. In 1330s, a Mongol law prohibited all kinds of weapons in the hands of Chinese. However it was restricted to civilians, who didn't usually carry firearms. An account of a 1359 battle near Hangzhou records that both the Ming Chinese and Mongol sides were equipped with cannon. From archeology, the oldest cannon in China was excavated in Acheng in 1970 dated prior to 1290 by Wei Guozhong. Another discovery was the inscribed metal cannon dated to about 1298 (大德二年). Which is similar to the bronze cannon of 1332 (至顺三年), that also had its date inscription. In 1974, an agglomerated ingredients which contains 60% saltpetre, 20% sulfur, 20% charcoal that dated to about late the 13th century was unearthed in the city of Xi'an. Many early mixtures of Chinese gunpowder contained toxic substances such as mercury and arsenic compounds.

In the 13th century, the Mongols conquered China and with it the technology of gunpowder. The use of cannon and rockets became a feature of East Asian warfare thereafter. The low, thick city walls of Beijing (started in 1406), for example, were specifically designed to withstand a gunpowder artillery attack, and the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) moved the capital from Nanjing to Beijing in 1421, because the hills around Nanjing were good locations for invaders to place artillery.

In the 13th century contemporary documentation shows gunpowder beginning to spread from China to the rest of the world, starting with Europe and the Islamic world. The Arabs acquired knowledge of saltpetre—which they called "Chinese snow" (thalj al-Sīn)—around 1240 and, soon afterward, of gunpowder; they also learned of fireworks ("Chinese flowers") and rockets ("Chinese arrows"). Gunpowder arrived in India by the mid-1300s, but could have been introduced by the Mongols perhaps as early as the mid-1200s.

The Islamic world

Saltpetre was known to the Arabs in an early time as it was known to Khalid ibn Yazid (d. 709) and was known under various names, it is used as a flux in metallurgical operations and for producing nitric acid and aqua regia. Recipes for these uses are found in the works of Jabir ibn Hayyan (Geber, d. 815), Abu Bakr al-Razi (Rhazes, d.932) and other alchemists. Arabs were the first to purify saltpeter to the weapon grade purity as potassium nitrate must be purified to be used effectively, there are two celebrated works which described the purification process one is Ibn Bakhtawayh in his book "Al-Muqaddimat" and the other is by Hassan al-Rammah in his book "al-furusiyya wa al-manasib al-harbiyya". A complete gunpowder reciept exist in an 10th century Arabic manuscript, in another manuscript from the 10th century there is a full description of gun powder and its use in cannons. The first major use of gun was in the year 1118 trying to break the Firanjah from occupying Zaragoza, then in 1260 in the Battle of Ain Jalut The Arabs are reported to have used rockets on the Iberian Peninsula in 1249; and in 1288 rockets attacked Valencia, Ibn Khaldun mention the use of a cannon in the year 1274 during the seige of Sijilmasa .

India

In 1848, Professor Wilson, speaking to the Asiatic Society of Calcutta (of which he was Director), said,

The question as to the knowledge of gunpowder or any similar explosive substance, by the ancient people of India is one of great historical interest...and our acquaintance with their literature, is as yet, too imperfect to warrant a reply in the negative because we have not met with a positive account of the invention.

The claim that gunpowder was invented in ancient India has been promoted more recently by Bhattacharya in (Buchanan 2006).

Europe

One theory of how gunpowder came to Europe is that it made its way along the Silk Road through the Middle East; another is that it was brought to Europe during the Mongol invasion in the first half of the 13th century.

The earliest European reference to gunpowder is found in Roger Bacon's Epistola de secretis operibus artiis et naturae from 1267. The oldest written recipes for gunpowder in Europe were recorded under the name Marcus Graecus or Mark the Greek between 1280 and 1300.

In 1326, the earliest known European picture of a gun appeared in a manuscript by Walter de Milemete. On February 11 of that same year, the Signoria of Florence appointed two officers to obtain canones de mettallo and ammunition for the town's defense. A reference from 1331 describes an attack mounted by two Germanic knights on Cividale del Friuli, using gunpowder weapons of some sort. The French raiding party that sacked and burned Southampton in 1338 brought with them a ribaudequin and 48 bolts (but only 3 pounds of gunpowder). The Battle of Crécy in 1346 was one of the first in Europe where cannons were used. In 1350, only four years later, Petrarch wrote that the presence of cannons on the battlefield was 'as common and familiar as other kinds of arms'.

Until the invention of explosives, large rocks could only be broken up by hard labour, or heating with large fires followed by rapid quenching. Black powder was used in civil engineering and mining as early as the 15th century. The earliest surviving record for the use of gunpowder in mines comes from Hungary in 1627. It was introduced to Britain in 1638 by German miners, after which records are numerous. Until the invention of the safety fuse by William Bickford in 1831, the practice was extremely dangerous. Another reason for danger was the dense fumes given off and the risk of igniting flammable gas when used in coal mines.

The first time gunpowder was used on a large scale in civil engineering was in the construction of the Canal du Midi in Southern France. It was completed in 1681 and linked the Mediterranean sea with the Bay of Biscay with 240 km of canal and 100 locks. Another noteworthy consumer of blackpowder was the Erie canal in New York, which was 585 km long and took eight years to complete, starting in 1817.

Black powder was also extensively used in railway construction. At first railways followed the contours of the land, or crossed low ground by means of bridges and viaducts; but later railways made extensive use of cuttings and tunnels. One 800-metre stretch of the 3.3 km Box Tunnel on the Great Western Railway line between London and Bristol consumed a tonne of gunpowder per week for over two years. The 12.9 km long Mont Cenis Tunnel was completed in 13 years starting in 1857, but even with black powder progress was only 25 cm a day until the invention of pneumatic drills sped up the work.

Notes

  1. Bhattacharya (in Buchanan 2006, p. 42) acknowledges that "most sources credit the Chinese with the discovery of gunpowder" though he himself disagrees.
  2. ^ Chase 2003:31–32
  3. Buchanan. "Editor's Introduction: Setting the Context", in Buchanan 2006.
  4. Kelly 2004:4
  5. Gernet, Jacques (1996). A History of Chinese Civilization. Trans. J. R. Foster & Charles Hartman (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. p. 311. The discovery originated from the alchemical researches made in the Taoist circles of the T'ang age, but was soon put to military use in the years 904–6. It was a matter at that time of incendiary projectiles called 'flying fires' (fei-huo). {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  6. Feng 1954:15-16 harvcolnb error: no target: CITEREFFeng1954 (help)
  7. Zhong 1995:60 harvcolnb error: no target: CITEREFZhong1995 (help)
  8. Needham 1986:8–9
  9. Crosby 2002:99
  10. Kelly 2004:15–17
  11. Needham 1986:263–275
  12. Kelly 2004:10
  13. Xu 1986:29 harvcolnb error: no target: CITEREFXu1986 (help)
  14. Feng 1991:461 harvcolnb error: no target: CITEREFFeng1991 (help)
  15. ^ Needham 1986:345
  16. Needham 1986:347
  17. ^ Needham 1986:126
  18. Crosby 2002:100–103
  19. ^ Needham 1986:209–210
  20. Wang 1991:48
  21. Kelly 2004:17
  22. Zhong 1995:193-194
  23. Wang 1991:50-58
  24. Liu 2004:47-50.
  25. Liu 2004:46-47
  26. Wang 1991: 103-115
  27. Kelly 2004:23–25
  28. ^ Urbanski 1967, Chapter III: Blackpowder Cite error: The named reference "urbanski" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  29. Needham 1986:108
  30. Chase 2003:130
  31. ^ History of Science and Technology in Islam
  32. Muslim Heritage
  33. IslamOnline (Arabic)
  34. Islamset (in Arabic)
  35. The Intelligence of Islamic Civilization -from wikibooks- (Arabic)
  36. Bhattacharya in Buchanan 2006, p. 43
  37. Norris 2003:11
  38. ^ Chase 2003:58
  39. Kelly 2004:25
  40. Kelly 2004:23
  41. ^ Kelly 2004:29
  42. Crosby 2002:120
  43. Kelly 2004:19–37
  44. Norris 2003:19
  45. Earl 1978, Chapter 2: The Development of Gunpowder
  46. Earl, (1978). Chapter 1: Introduction
  47. ^ Brown (1998), Chapter 6: Mining and Civil Engineering

References

  • Guns and Rifles of the World by Howard Blackmore ISBN 0-670-35780-4
  • Brown, G. I. (1998), The Big Bang: A History of Explosives, Sutton Publishing, ISBN 0-7509-1878-0.
  • Buchanan, Brenda J., ed. (2006), Gunpowder, Explosives and the State: A Technological History, Aldershot: Ashgate, ISBN 0754652599.
  • Chase, Kenneth (2003), Firearms: A Global History to 1700, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521822742.
  • Cocroft, Wayne (2000), Dangerous Energy: The archaeology of gunpowder and military explosives manufacture, Swindon: English Heritage, ISBN 1-85074-718-0.
  • Crosby, Alfred W. (2002), Throwing Fire: Projectile Technology Through History, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521791588.
  • Davis, Tenney L. (1943). The Chemistry of Powder & Explosives. (Republished) ISBN 0-913022-00-4.
  • Earl, Brian (1978), Cornish Explosives, Cornwall: The Trevithick Society, ISBN 0-904040-13-5.
  • Feng Jiasheng (1954). The Invention of Gunpowder and Its Spread to The West. Shanghai: Shanghai People's Press. TQ56-09/1.
  • Feng Wu, et al (1992). Selection of Ancient Chinese Military Masterpieces. Bejing: Jingguan Jiaoyu Press. ISBN 7-81027-097-4.
  • From Greek fire to dynamite.A cultural history of the explosives by Jochen Gartz.E.S.Mittler &Sohn. Hamburg year 2007,ISBN 978-3-8132-0867-2.
  • Kelly, Jack (2004), Gunpowder: Alchemy, Bombards, & Pyrotechnics: The History of the Explosive that Changed the World, Basic Books, ISBN 0465037186.
  • Khan, Iqtidar Ali (1996), "Coming of Gunpowder to the Islamic World and North India: Spotlight on the Role of the Mongols", Journal of Asian History, 30: 41–5.
  • Liang, Jieming (2006), Chinese Siege Warfare: Mechanical Artillery & Siege Weapons of Antiquity, ISBN 981-05-5380-3
  • Liu Xu (2004). History of Ancient Chinese Firearms and Black Powder. Zhengzhou: Elephant Press. ISBN 7-5347-3028-7.
  • Needham, Joseph (1986), Science & Civilisation in China, vol. V:7: The Gunpowder Epic, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521303583.
  • Norris, John (2003), Early Gunpowder Artillery: 1300-1600, Marlborough: The Crowood Press.
  • Partington, J.R. (1960), A History of Greek Fire and Gunpowder, Cambridge, UK: W. Heffer & Sons.
  • Urbanski, Tadeusz (1967), Chemistry and Technology of Explosives, vol. III, New York: Pergamon Press.
  • Wang Zhaocun (1991). A History of Chinese Firearms. Beijing: Military Science Press. ISBN 7-80021-304-8.
  • Xu Huilin (1986). A History of Chinese Black Powder and Firearms. Shanghai: Kexuepuji Press. CN / TQ56-092.
  • Zhang, Yunming (1986), "Ancient Chinese Sulfur Manufacturing Processes", Isis, 77 (3): 487–497.
  • Zhong Shaoyi (1995). Research on the History of Ancient Chinese Black Powder and Firearms. Beijing: Chinese Social Siences Press. ISBN 7-5004-1800-0

See also