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Wow. It appears that in the last four months this article has managed to generate itself seven pages' worth of discussion around the single issue of who invented the stuff. No wonder the article is a complete mess. I'd argue that we're placing undue weight on this issue to the detriment of the rest of the article.
Tempted to spin this off into a history of gunpowder article. The talk page archives could be shifted over there; it's not like they're in any particular chronological order right now anyway. Chris Cunningham 15:08, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
To: PericlesofAthens
You added much of the material in the history section.
Might I ask you to remove material which overlaps with
gunpowder warfare/
history of firearms or which more appropriately belongs in those articles?
JFD
18:39, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
I may as well take this opportunity to clarify my position and clearly state that I would prefer that the history of gunpowder article not be split off and that excess material be transferred to gunpowder warfare/ history of firearms instead. JFD 08:28, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
I've taken the liberty of creating a rough (very rough) proposal for the history section below. All it is is the current history section with material removed where the article got too abstruse and esoteric. I haven't really done anything to, as Jaysweet put it, "bring the article under compliance" so that would still have to be done. At this point it's only useful to ask others if they agree with the removal of the more abstruse and esoteric paragraphs. JFD 09:40, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Proposed rudimentary framework for History section |
---|
The earliest clear, certain references to saltpetre explosives come from China. Joseph Needham argues that ancient Chinese alchemists were probably the first to develop an early form of gunpowder, as part of their search for elixirs of immortality. He notes that only in China was there evidence of the precursors of black powder (Needham's 'proto-gunpowders' and early 'true gunpowders'), while in Europe, black powder is noted to appear suddenly and already relatively developed in recipes incorporating saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal (and early on, other adulterants). [1] Needham calls gunpowder one of the Four Great Inventions of ancient China. Adoption of this definition and historical perspective places the earliest recipe for gunpowder in China, no later than the eleventh century. The earliest extant recipe for gunpowder in the form of pure black powder, however, was set down by Roger Bacon in England in 1267. [2] [3] There is no direct record of how the formula for black powder was invented, or how it came to be known in Europe and Asia, but most scholars believe that saltpeter explosives developed into an early form of black powder in China, and that this technology spread west from China to the Middle East and then Europe, possibly via the Silk Road. [4] [5] [1] Bert S. Hall promotes the view that many cultures contributed to the development of gunpowder in its ultimate form.
The facilitation of combustion by addition of saltpeter was discovered very early in China. An early record of Chinese alchemical experimentation comes from a Han era book The Kinship of the Three compiled in 142 A.D. by Wei Boyang [7] [8], where he recorded experiments in which a set of ingredients were said to "fly and dance" in a violent reaction. By 300 A.D., Ge Hong, an alchemist of the Jin dynasty conclusively recorded the chemical reactions caused when saltpeter, redwood and charcoal were heated together in his book "Book of the Master of the Preservations of Solidarity". [9] A ninth-century record of Chinese experimentation with saltpetre, the "Classified Essentials of the Mysterious Tao of the True Origin of Things," indicates that saltpeter-aided combustion was an unintended byproduct of Taoist alchemical efforts to develop an elixir of immortality: [10]
This period of alchemical experimentation coincided with a long period of political disunity. According to Kenneth Chase, "China suffered from long periods of disunity during which there was some immediate use for infantry and siege weapons . . . The discovery of gunpowder in the 800s coincided with another such period, from 756 to 960." [12] The years 904–6 saw the use of incendiary projectiles called 'flying fires' (fei-huo). [13] One early application was the fire lance, a handheld flamethrower which could also be loaded with shrapnel, and first depicted in Chinese artwork by c. 950 AD; [14] by the late thirteenth century the Chinese developed these into guns. [15] In archeological terms the oldest existent bronze handgun is from the Chinese Heilongjiang excavation dated to 1288 AD. [16] Of little surprise, in the years 1287-1288 AD the Yuan Shi historical text describes the rebellion of the Christian Mongol prince Nayan and the Jurchen-born military commander Li Ting who, along with a Korean brigade conscripted by Kublai Khan, suppressed Nayan's rebellion by using foot soldiers armed with handguns and portable bombards. [17] The various Chinese formulas for explosives in the Wu Ching Tsung Yao held levels of nitrate in the range of 27% to 50%. [18] By the end of the 12th century, Chinese formulas for explosives were capable of bursting through cast iron metal containers, in the form of the earliest hollow, grenade bombs filled with these explosives. [19] Saltpetre combustion technology spread to the Arabs in the 13th century, [20] [21] what the Arabs had called "Chinese snow" (thalj al-Sin). [22] Ajram (1992) claims that the Chinese only developed saltpeter for use in fireworks and knew of no tactical military use for gunpowder, which was first developed by Muslims, as were fire-arms, and that the first documentation of a cannon was in an Arabic text ca 1300 CE. Gunpowder arrived in India perhaps as early as the mid-1200s, when the Mongols could have introduced it, but in any event no later than the mid-1300s. [23] Asitesh Bhattacharya cites a number of studies, most from the 19th century, to argue that gunpowder was invented in ancient India. [24] The earliest extant written reference to gunpowder in Europe is in Roger Bacon's "De nullitate magiæ" at Oxford in 1234. [2] In Bacon's "De Secretis Operibus Artis et Naturae" in 1248, he states:
The last part is probably some sort of coded anagram for the quantities needed. In the Opus Maior he describes firecrackers around 1267:
In 1326, the earliest known picture of a gun, from anywhere in the world, appeared in a treatise entitled "Of the Majesty, Wisdom and Prudence of Kings," by Walter de Milemete. [26] [27] [28] 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. [29] A reference from 1331 describes an attack mounted by two Germanic knights on Cividale del Friuli, using gunpowder weapons of some sort. [28] 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). [28] The Battle of Crécy in 1346 was one of the first in Europe where cannons were used. [30] Writing shortly after this in 1350, the famous poet Petrarch described cannons on the battlefield "as common and familiar as other kinds of arms." [31] Europe soon surpassed the rest of the world in gunpowder technology, especially during the late 14th century with the development of the process of black powder "corning". [32] Corning involves forcing damp powder through a sieve to form it into granules which harden when dry, preventing the component ingredients of gunpowder from separating over time, thus making it far more reliable and consistent. It also allowed for more powerful and faster ignition, since the spaces between the particles allowed for oxygen necessary for speedy combustion. However, the prevalence of superstitious belief in alchemy and magic commonly led, at least in the early days of firearms, to the adulteration of the mixture with exotic, but of course deleterious products, usually mercury salts, arsenic and amber. citation needed Shot and gunpowder for military purposes were made by skilled military tradesmen, who later were called firemakers, and who also were required to make fireworks for celebrations of victory or peace. During the Renaissance, two European schools of pyrotechnic thought emerged, one in Italy and the other at Nürnberg, Germany. The Italian school of pyrotechnics emphasized elaborate fireworks, and the German school stressed scientific advancement. Both schools added significantly to further development of pyrotechnics, and by the mid- 17th century fireworks were used for entertainment on an unprecedented scale in Europe, being popular even at resorts and public gardens. [33] The introduction of Smokeless powders for military purposes lead to a contraction of the gunpowder industry. |
In China, the importance of safety measures has not always been recognized. 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. [34] 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. [34]
The sources i have provided are considerable they are from well known specialized and scientific web sites and those web sites cite the source, i have copied the source and provided the website that cited it, so the whole thing is scientific, check those websites and if you have and problem whith their content just tell me:
so dont remove any cited information and if you have any other sources just add them Tinglepal 11:21, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
I thought the whole rationale in shifting the focus away from early history was so that we could add more information on the technology itself. I don't see much new technical information, but the history stuff has been gutted, dumbed down, and crammed to the bottom. I can't believe I am the only person who came to this article because he wanted to know the history of gunpowder rather than the fact that the optimal percentage of sulfur by weight is 11.85%. (On whose authority we know this we can only guess; no citation is given.)
Peace, Ocanter 18:33, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
I have not checked myself, but if you take an equation such as 10 KNO3 + 3 S + 8 C → 2 K2CO3 + 3 K2SO4 + 6 CO2 + 5 N2 and use the appropriate molecular masses, the left hand side of the equation can be expressed as percentages by weight. Pyrotec 20:11, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
{{
cite book}}
: |pages=
has extra text (
help)
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Wow. It appears that in the last four months this article has managed to generate itself seven pages' worth of discussion around the single issue of who invented the stuff. No wonder the article is a complete mess. I'd argue that we're placing undue weight on this issue to the detriment of the rest of the article.
Tempted to spin this off into a history of gunpowder article. The talk page archives could be shifted over there; it's not like they're in any particular chronological order right now anyway. Chris Cunningham 15:08, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
To: PericlesofAthens
You added much of the material in the history section.
Might I ask you to remove material which overlaps with
gunpowder warfare/
history of firearms or which more appropriately belongs in those articles?
JFD
18:39, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
I may as well take this opportunity to clarify my position and clearly state that I would prefer that the history of gunpowder article not be split off and that excess material be transferred to gunpowder warfare/ history of firearms instead. JFD 08:28, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
I've taken the liberty of creating a rough (very rough) proposal for the history section below. All it is is the current history section with material removed where the article got too abstruse and esoteric. I haven't really done anything to, as Jaysweet put it, "bring the article under compliance" so that would still have to be done. At this point it's only useful to ask others if they agree with the removal of the more abstruse and esoteric paragraphs. JFD 09:40, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Proposed rudimentary framework for History section |
---|
The earliest clear, certain references to saltpetre explosives come from China. Joseph Needham argues that ancient Chinese alchemists were probably the first to develop an early form of gunpowder, as part of their search for elixirs of immortality. He notes that only in China was there evidence of the precursors of black powder (Needham's 'proto-gunpowders' and early 'true gunpowders'), while in Europe, black powder is noted to appear suddenly and already relatively developed in recipes incorporating saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal (and early on, other adulterants). [1] Needham calls gunpowder one of the Four Great Inventions of ancient China. Adoption of this definition and historical perspective places the earliest recipe for gunpowder in China, no later than the eleventh century. The earliest extant recipe for gunpowder in the form of pure black powder, however, was set down by Roger Bacon in England in 1267. [2] [3] There is no direct record of how the formula for black powder was invented, or how it came to be known in Europe and Asia, but most scholars believe that saltpeter explosives developed into an early form of black powder in China, and that this technology spread west from China to the Middle East and then Europe, possibly via the Silk Road. [4] [5] [1] Bert S. Hall promotes the view that many cultures contributed to the development of gunpowder in its ultimate form.
The facilitation of combustion by addition of saltpeter was discovered very early in China. An early record of Chinese alchemical experimentation comes from a Han era book The Kinship of the Three compiled in 142 A.D. by Wei Boyang [7] [8], where he recorded experiments in which a set of ingredients were said to "fly and dance" in a violent reaction. By 300 A.D., Ge Hong, an alchemist of the Jin dynasty conclusively recorded the chemical reactions caused when saltpeter, redwood and charcoal were heated together in his book "Book of the Master of the Preservations of Solidarity". [9] A ninth-century record of Chinese experimentation with saltpetre, the "Classified Essentials of the Mysterious Tao of the True Origin of Things," indicates that saltpeter-aided combustion was an unintended byproduct of Taoist alchemical efforts to develop an elixir of immortality: [10]
This period of alchemical experimentation coincided with a long period of political disunity. According to Kenneth Chase, "China suffered from long periods of disunity during which there was some immediate use for infantry and siege weapons . . . The discovery of gunpowder in the 800s coincided with another such period, from 756 to 960." [12] The years 904–6 saw the use of incendiary projectiles called 'flying fires' (fei-huo). [13] One early application was the fire lance, a handheld flamethrower which could also be loaded with shrapnel, and first depicted in Chinese artwork by c. 950 AD; [14] by the late thirteenth century the Chinese developed these into guns. [15] In archeological terms the oldest existent bronze handgun is from the Chinese Heilongjiang excavation dated to 1288 AD. [16] Of little surprise, in the years 1287-1288 AD the Yuan Shi historical text describes the rebellion of the Christian Mongol prince Nayan and the Jurchen-born military commander Li Ting who, along with a Korean brigade conscripted by Kublai Khan, suppressed Nayan's rebellion by using foot soldiers armed with handguns and portable bombards. [17] The various Chinese formulas for explosives in the Wu Ching Tsung Yao held levels of nitrate in the range of 27% to 50%. [18] By the end of the 12th century, Chinese formulas for explosives were capable of bursting through cast iron metal containers, in the form of the earliest hollow, grenade bombs filled with these explosives. [19] Saltpetre combustion technology spread to the Arabs in the 13th century, [20] [21] what the Arabs had called "Chinese snow" (thalj al-Sin). [22] Ajram (1992) claims that the Chinese only developed saltpeter for use in fireworks and knew of no tactical military use for gunpowder, which was first developed by Muslims, as were fire-arms, and that the first documentation of a cannon was in an Arabic text ca 1300 CE. Gunpowder arrived in India perhaps as early as the mid-1200s, when the Mongols could have introduced it, but in any event no later than the mid-1300s. [23] Asitesh Bhattacharya cites a number of studies, most from the 19th century, to argue that gunpowder was invented in ancient India. [24] The earliest extant written reference to gunpowder in Europe is in Roger Bacon's "De nullitate magiæ" at Oxford in 1234. [2] In Bacon's "De Secretis Operibus Artis et Naturae" in 1248, he states:
The last part is probably some sort of coded anagram for the quantities needed. In the Opus Maior he describes firecrackers around 1267:
In 1326, the earliest known picture of a gun, from anywhere in the world, appeared in a treatise entitled "Of the Majesty, Wisdom and Prudence of Kings," by Walter de Milemete. [26] [27] [28] 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. [29] A reference from 1331 describes an attack mounted by two Germanic knights on Cividale del Friuli, using gunpowder weapons of some sort. [28] 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). [28] The Battle of Crécy in 1346 was one of the first in Europe where cannons were used. [30] Writing shortly after this in 1350, the famous poet Petrarch described cannons on the battlefield "as common and familiar as other kinds of arms." [31] Europe soon surpassed the rest of the world in gunpowder technology, especially during the late 14th century with the development of the process of black powder "corning". [32] Corning involves forcing damp powder through a sieve to form it into granules which harden when dry, preventing the component ingredients of gunpowder from separating over time, thus making it far more reliable and consistent. It also allowed for more powerful and faster ignition, since the spaces between the particles allowed for oxygen necessary for speedy combustion. However, the prevalence of superstitious belief in alchemy and magic commonly led, at least in the early days of firearms, to the adulteration of the mixture with exotic, but of course deleterious products, usually mercury salts, arsenic and amber. citation needed Shot and gunpowder for military purposes were made by skilled military tradesmen, who later were called firemakers, and who also were required to make fireworks for celebrations of victory or peace. During the Renaissance, two European schools of pyrotechnic thought emerged, one in Italy and the other at Nürnberg, Germany. The Italian school of pyrotechnics emphasized elaborate fireworks, and the German school stressed scientific advancement. Both schools added significantly to further development of pyrotechnics, and by the mid- 17th century fireworks were used for entertainment on an unprecedented scale in Europe, being popular even at resorts and public gardens. [33] The introduction of Smokeless powders for military purposes lead to a contraction of the gunpowder industry. |
In China, the importance of safety measures has not always been recognized. 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. [34] 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. [34]
The sources i have provided are considerable they are from well known specialized and scientific web sites and those web sites cite the source, i have copied the source and provided the website that cited it, so the whole thing is scientific, check those websites and if you have and problem whith their content just tell me:
so dont remove any cited information and if you have any other sources just add them Tinglepal 11:21, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
I thought the whole rationale in shifting the focus away from early history was so that we could add more information on the technology itself. I don't see much new technical information, but the history stuff has been gutted, dumbed down, and crammed to the bottom. I can't believe I am the only person who came to this article because he wanted to know the history of gunpowder rather than the fact that the optimal percentage of sulfur by weight is 11.85%. (On whose authority we know this we can only guess; no citation is given.)
Peace, Ocanter 18:33, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
I have not checked myself, but if you take an equation such as 10 KNO3 + 3 S + 8 C → 2 K2CO3 + 3 K2SO4 + 6 CO2 + 5 N2 and use the appropriate molecular masses, the left hand side of the equation can be expressed as percentages by weight. Pyrotec 20:11, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
{{
cite book}}
: |pages=
has extra text (
help)