Blackpowder History

[Sir Charles deMouton-Black]

Did you really think that the Chinese invented blackpowder?  Do you need instruction on building a replica "Hand Gonne".  This, and more, from Ulrich Bretscher of Switzerland.

http://www.musketeer.ch/blackpowder/history.html

[Steel Horse Bailey]

Fascinating report, Sir Chas!

I got a kick from the part where he says that if typed and combined together, all the "recipes" would be about 6 pages long.  And one of the very first is VERY close to a near perfect modern mix.

So many folks think that only modern thinkers and inventors can make anything of value!

[Sir Charles deMouton-Black]

SHB;  There is a reason I tried to post this in the Dark Arts, in that is the best essay on the early history of true gunpowder. 

Soot Lords, there will be a test

[Steel Horse Bailey]

SHB;  There is a reason I tried to post this in the Dark Arts, in that is the best essay on the early history of true gunpowder. 

Soot Lords, there will be a test

Oh, goody.

Back to midnight cramming sessions to pass the finals.

[TwoWalks Baldridge]

Oh, goody.

Back to midnight cramming sessions to pass the finals.

Hah, the only thing I ever crammed before finals was Pizza ... with my grade point average, it did not take much study to maintain.

This is great and fun information.

[Steel Horse Bailey]

Hah, the only thing I ever crammed before finals was Pizza ... with my grade point average, it did not take much study to maintain.

This is great and fun information.

Uh, me too, it seems!   

[Driftwood Johnson]

And one of the very first is VERY close to a near perfect modern mix.

Howdy

I have an old textbook written by Tenny L Davis about the chemistry of explosives published in 1943. He goes into quite a lot of detail about some of the early ratios of saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal. He goes back before Roger Bacon to the 8th Century AD and a guy named Marcus Graceus, who wrote down the formulas for Black Powder and Greek Fire.

A mixture very close to the present ratio of the components was published in 1560.

Davis says "It is a remarkable fact, and one which indicates that the improvements in black powder have been largely in the methods of manufacture, that the last three of these formulas (1560, 1635, and 1781)correspond very closely to the composition of all the potassium nitrate black powder for military and sporting purposes which is used today.

By the way, Tenny also credits an Arabian physician named Mesue in the 9th Century with documenting a lot of the early experimental work with Black Powder. 

[Shotgun Franklin]

We have more technology and stored knowledge to draw from but IMO our forefathers were pretty smart people. Think about the first guy to squat next to a pile of twigs and beat two rocks together to make fire or the guy or gal who figured out how to mix some stuff
to make bread dough that then had to be baked. They were not dummies by any stretch of the imagination. All modern knowledge is based on those the thinking of who long ago figured out the really hard basics.

[Sir Charles deMouton-Black]

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Isaac Newton, Letter to Robert Hooke, February 5, 1675

[Steel Horse Bailey]

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Isaac Newton, Letter to Robert Hooke, February 5, 1675

Well said, Sir Chas!

... and Sir Isaac Newton, of course!  I had heard that before, but I never knew who said it. 


You live and learn ... or you don't live long.

Woodrow Wilson Smith (Woody) a.k.a. Lazarus Long - 2263   (via R.H. Heinlein; Time Enough For Love)