The Invention of Fireworks

Fireworks are a staple of celebrations around the world, but where does this invention come from and what’s the basic chemistry of their combustion? In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe light the fuse and find out.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
today we're doing fireworks. Hey, Robert, did did you grow
up in a place where, whatever the actual law was,

(00:25):
you at least thought that fireworks were illegal and that
setting them off in your yard might summon the police. No.
I I grew up in places where it seemed that
fireworks were just part of life, and you could just
go out and play with a bunch of firecrackers in
the afternoon by yourself, and it wasn't any big deal,

(00:45):
you know, strap them to Joe there in um build
little volcanoes out of dirt and then blow them up
to get some scotch tape and see how many, um
what bottle rockets you could uh lash together and still
achieve some thing that would fly through the air, that
sort of thing. So definitely, when I was a little kid,
I had the impression that using fireworks was illegal. I

(01:07):
don't know if it was, but I think that's because
you couldn't buy them in the county where I lived.
So when Fourth of July or New Year's or whatever
was coming up and we wanted to get fireworks, we
had to go on a road trip up or down
the interstate to to one of the more lawless evil
counties where you could go to Big Daddy's Firecrackers, or
you know, one of these other places. I remember when

(01:27):
I was a kid one time buying a you know,
using my little allowance money to buy a firecracker that
was very exciting looking because it was shaped like a tank.
It was made of cardboard, and I thought, now, this
thing is going to be like a piece of mobile artillery.
It's going to roll around and shootout stuff. I recall
it didn't really do much, and it was one of

(01:49):
my earliest experiences of spending money on something expecting it
to be great and it being a total flop. I
remember being really impressed with the like the tanks and
the little sort of novelty items, because basically we when
Fourth of July or New Years would roll around, they'd
set up a ten er a couple of tenths in
town in the place where I grew up, and and

(02:10):
you know, they would sell the fireworks there. I always
wanted to get things like the tank, but generally a
parental or grown up unit that was present would would say, no, no, no,
that's that's a waste of money. You want something that
goes up in the air and blows up. My my
fondest memory I remember, I think my grandparents got this
one was one that went up, exploded and dropped tiny

(02:31):
parachute men out of it, like yeah, and that was
that was crazy. That was awesome because it's dropping something.
Then you then find that's not just total garbage. I mean,
it's essentially garbage, but not total garbage. No, that's great
because then you strap a firecracker to that army man
and put it up. Yeah, I guess um. But then

(02:51):
I also remember being really impressed by the ones that
looked like actual rockets. The more rockety, the better, right,
And I distinctly remember sucking my my parents into getting
this this one rocket and then we we we brought
it home. And as it turned out, one of the
problems with this particular rocket is it's supposed to have
a launching rod, you know, like a rod that sticks
into the ground that ensures that it takes off in

(03:12):
a you know, a with a straight skyward trajectory. That
rod had been misplaced prior to purchase, so it did
not have one. So we set this thing off and
it instead of going straight up into the sky and exploding,
it went straight up and made a turn and then
went through a a a narrow gap in the sliding

(03:34):
glass door of our house, and it hit my uncle
in the face. Fortunately didn't like blow up in his
face or anything, but like, you know, kind of punctured
his cheek a little bit, and then like skidded around
on the carpeted floor shooting sparks everywhere. Uh So that
was exciting. Did you get to keep playing with fireworks
after that? Uh? Yeah, I guess it did inspire me

(03:56):
to be a little maybe I was a little more
careful after that, and I certainly to get into the
total recklessness of you know, people launching Roman candles at
each other, that sort of thing that you hear about.
I was generally it was about Yeah you hear about
or your horror stories about but or or that your
friends did in high school. Yeah, for me, it was
just firecrackers and in bottle rockets, so that you know,

(04:20):
low level uh and firework ammunition here, not getting into
like cherry bombs and so forth. I have personal stories
about firecracker use in high school that I'm just not
going to share on the podcast because I do not
want to inspire imitators and and have kids get body
parts blown off. Yeah, I have to say as a parent,
I certainly am far more protective when it comes to fireworks. Hey,

(04:43):
I'm not like super into them as an As a
grown up, um, I like watching professional fireworks every now
and then, But then again, I'm not going to really
go out of my way to see them. If they're around,
I will look up, you know. And I'm I'm more
protective of my son, like I don't. I don't really
like the idea of him even playing with fireworks to
the degree that I did growing up. Well, you know,

(05:04):
one safe alternative that has always puzzled me is one
of the most bizarre genres of home media that I've
ever seen. I recall seeing these, I think in the
gift shop area of a cracker barrel and DVD's of
fireworks displays. Oh man, I vaguely remember seeing because I

(05:24):
never watched one, that's for sure. Yeah I didn't either,
But I'm just wondering, what, So does somebody buy this
DVD and take it home and just put it on.
It's like, yeah, I just want to watch some fireworks
in the living room. I guess, you know. I mean,
is it that different from watching the Hearth on Netflix
every Christmas? I think it's somewhat different. I mean, neither
one's going to give off heat the way that it

(05:45):
would in reality. But you know, a real fireworks display,
you sort of feel the sound. There's this booming thing,
and and it's live, so you're usually experiencing it along
with many other people who are celebrating something. Just having
one on the TV. I don't know that I feel
like he get closer to the reality of a fire
burning in your fireplace with a fire on the TV. Yeah,

(06:07):
probably so, probably so. Uh then again, I do I
do know that they televise, or at least in the past,
they would televise some of these big fireworks shows and
and I remember I remember those being on TV when
I was a kid. Yeah, I guess so, so as
as everyone can guess, here we are talking about fireworks today.
This is going to be one of our Invention themed

(06:28):
episodes are an exploration of the origin of fireworks, which
is a fascinating story that I think a lot of
us probably know like the broad strokes of it. I
think a lot of people are probably at the very
least vaguely aware of the Chinese origins that we're going
to be discussing here, But even just the Chinese origins
of fireworks, it's it's just such a wonderful tale, full

(06:51):
of mystery and magic and and also goblins. And then likewise,
when we get into the European history of it as well,
there is a lot of magic and miss red there
as well. Totally, So we're not going to run through
the entire history of pyro technology here, but suffice to
say that the human ability to manipulate, sustain, control, and

(07:12):
produce fire is key to technological advancement as a whole.
I mean, it's just difficult to overstate the importance of
fire mastery in human history. It's not just key, it's
the master key. It's the thing that unlocks almost everything else. Again,
there's a reason that broadly historical technological regimes are characterized

(07:34):
in terms of metal working, like what types of things
you could make tools out of, And you couldn't really
have metal working without fire, That's right. If you want
a more detailed breakdown of sort of like the basic
fire technology history of humanity. Check out our what was it?
A three part series we did on the match Stick
for Invention our our other show which has now been

(07:57):
folded back into this show, but all those episodes about
the match are still available for your listening. The fire
Extinguisher too. We talked to us, right, yeah, we kind
of can we continue? So it's ultimately more like a
six part journey through uh, some major moments in pyrotechnology.
I feel like this show is maybe against our wishes,
revealing some freudy and preoccupations going on in both of

(08:18):
our brains. But with explosive fireworks, we can't stop thinking
and talking about firecrackers, fire setting fire to stuff. Yeah, yeah,
I guess so. Well. Also, we're coming up on July four,
and I think that was one of the main issues
here too, is we've been talking about doing a fireworks
episode forever and then finally um Work asked asked, us, hey,

(08:40):
do you have anything in the catalog that's July four themed?
And we're like, well, no, not really, but we've been
wanting to do fireworks, so here we are. So one
of the things that we touch on in those pyrotechnology
episodes is that in many ways, the camp fire itself,
the longstanding and important aspect of a human culture, is
in its off, an ancient laboratory, a place where humans

(09:02):
experimented with the addition of various fuels and substances to
learn what burns, what doesn't burn, and sometimes what burns
really well or what combusts. You know, I didn't think
of this until just now, but this is also bringing
to mind the recent episodes we did about buildings made
out of mammoth bone that we're found in what is

(09:23):
now Russia and Ukraine. But in this ancient Ice Age culture,
and a big part of that culture seemed to be
based around the burning of bones as fuel, something we
wouldn't even normally think of as possible. Yeah, exactly, Like
bones are one example of of a of a combustion
uhh source that that has played an important role in
human history. Another one, of course, is dung um. Some

(09:46):
some listeners of particularly some cultures, may not be aware
of just how important dung has been and still is
in many cases as a fuel. You know, you can
almost still feel the instinct in yourself, or at least
I can when ever, you are sitting around to fire
and you have some kind of novel item, there's almost
this primordial urge to just see what it's like if

(10:07):
you just throw that in the fire. What does it
look like when it burns? What does it do? Yeah?
I see that with my son especially, we recently were
putting up we were we had some tomato plants and
we're like, oh, let's get some sticks to brace these suckers,
and then we realized, oh, no, the last time we
had a fire in the backyard, the boy burned everything,
like every every piece of dry wood was consented. So, oh,

(10:31):
I sympathize. So it shouldn't come as any surprise then
that there there are, you know, various accounts of pre
fireworks substances and materials that would combust or burn in
a certain way that was notable. And one of the
really key examples here that is central to the origin
of fireworks is bamboo. Now bamboo, I think everyone's familiar

(10:51):
with bamboo, but it is a hollow hearted grass. It's
especially common in East Asia, but you'll find it throughout
the world's tropical regions. Now, I know many of you
have enjoyed this exact experiment. Uh, and if you haven't,
I suggest you try it the next time you have
a campfire, if it all possible. Dry bamboo can burn
quite readily, and in some cases the drying out process

(11:14):
causes those hollows in the bamboo to crack open, but
other times there remains a sealed pocket of air in there.
So if you throw the bamboo into the fire, the
heat will cause the air within that hollow to expand,
and it will expand enough that it pops and produces
a startling bang when it explodes. I've never done this personally,

(11:35):
but now I really want to. Yeah, it's it's tremendous fun.
I mean it. We can well imagine that this was
one of the key attractions. It's like we put this
into the fire and it's it's it's alarming, it's entertaining,
it's uh, you know, it's it's raising your your awareness. Uh.
It's something that I think, you know, we can when
we experience it. We're experiencing the the primal experience of

(11:58):
burning bamboo as well. Now, this property of bamboo is
something that has been recognized since ancient times. Yes, absolutely, Um,
you know. It also brings to mind another interesting idea
that we recently discussed in our Phartonomicon episodes um Mary
Roach and her her book what was it? Uh gulp.

(12:18):
I believe she has his conversation with the University of
Alabama's Stephen Secor about snakes, and he has this theory
that uh hypothesis, rather that perhaps the myth of fire
breathing dragons has some origin in dead constrictor snakes bloated
with prey bring being brought to the fireside, and then

(12:39):
a post mortem exhalation of stomach gases ignites the flames,
that makes the flames roar up um, which you know,
I don't know if there's a whole lot of evidence
for that, but it was an interesting idea. Yeah, highly speculative,
but I like it. Yeah, And it gets again, it
kind of touches in the same area that we're touching
on here with bamboo. Uh, the idea that this inevitable

(12:59):
and use meant to be had in burning it in
the fire, So it would it would seem impossible to
truly date how far back this practice goes of observing
that bamboo pops in the fire. But given the necessary components,
you know, and the obvious lack of archaeological evidence. We
have to consider that it goes like pretty much all
the way back in uh, as far as there have

(13:21):
been peoples around bamboo that are capable of producing fire,
and in Chinese history, we at least can consider it
as long as we've had Chinese writing and uh, and
that is where we see some some you know, early
evidence that this was an established thing. So I was
reading some writings by um hiwang Yuan of Western Kentucky
University where he's a professor of Library science, but he's

(13:43):
also a guest professor of the Foreign Languages College at
Nankai University in China, and he's written several books on
Chinese proverbs and legends. In two thousand eight, he wrote
a piece on Chinese fireworks, and he points out, uh
that what we're talking about here is bao jou, which
is bloating bamboo, like that's the word for it, and
it later becomes used for fireworks. And he points to

(14:06):
a few early mentions of of this sort of thing.
He points to the Song Dynasty writer Woang and Anshi
who lived ten twenty one through six, who wrote a
poem in which one of the lines translates as follows
quote admits the crackling of exploding bamboo, a year is
gone in the warmth of a spring breeze, we drink

(14:26):
the wine of suzu. Now, to me, that's availing itself
of multiple interpretations. When the year is gone amidst the
crackling of bamboo. Is that because crackling bamboo is meant
to signal the turning of the new year? Or is
it that a year is gone in a flash as
as fast as as bamboo cracks. Yeah, it's nice. There's
some wonderful poetry to it that certainly it does seem

(14:49):
to be describing, uh, you know, whatever it's getting alluding to,
you know, metaphorically. It is also alluding to the Chinese
custom that the New Year spring festival celebration of burning
bamboo to create loud, startling noises as a part of celebrations.
This was actually making me wonder about the linguistic conceptual

(15:10):
history of exploding or the idea of an explosion. Before
a culture had combustible chemicals like say, black powder, would
the culture have had a concept or a word that
means exactly what explode means to us today. I'm trying
to think what other chances to observe natural explosions would

(15:33):
have been obviously, bamboo seems like a good one. But
what beyond that? You can think of volcanic eruptions, But
that wouldn't be something that people observed often enough you
would think that to have its own dedicated word for it. Uh.
And it seems to me like many early writings about
chemical combustion actually use words related to other, much more

(15:55):
common natural phenomenon that aren't exactly explosions, things like thunder
and lightning. Yeah, because I guess my mind does instantly
go to things that are more I guess a bursting
or rupturing. For instance, um, the popping of a of
of of a pimple or or a blister or or

(16:15):
some sort of you know, skin ailment, or the bursting
of say a blood filled kick, that sort of thing.
But those are again, it's more of a bursting or
a rupturing, and I would you know, we wouldn't necessarily
compare it to an exploding. Likewise, if you were doing
something with, say, bladders of animals that have been inflated
with air or water, and then you're bursting them in

(16:36):
some fashion, it's still probably a different thing than just explosion.
I can imagine that with a bladder, because it seems
like the important phenomena are the ones of like suddenly
relieving large amounts of pressure with a sound or some
kind of some kind of like tactile blasts that you
can feel. Yeah, and you're just not going to get
that with a with with a blood filled tick or

(16:59):
the pimple. I mean, if you could, that'd be pretty impressive. Yeah,
I mean it's kind of a mental popping sound, but
it's not really an audible sound. It's just more of
an experience. Um And then again, we're probably to what
extent or were we thinking about explosions when we engage,
and you know, it's like the the the the idea
of the explosion then informs how we're thinking about rupturing
and bursting. So um I mentioned there was another um

(17:23):
uh bit of poetry here that Yawn refers to. He
refers to writings in the Book of Songs, one of
the five classics of of Chinese poetry, said to be
compiled by Confusus himself, and this is from the late
Western Joe dynasty, which would be ten s b c
E through seven seventy one b c E and it
translates as follows, how goes the night. It's not yet midnight,

(17:47):
but the ting lao is already blazing. So king lao
apparently refers to a kind of torch made of bamboo,
and as it burns, it makes these crackling, perhaps popping noises.
So it's an upgrade eating of the bamboo popping effect
into a different sort of pyrotechnic device, not just desultory
poking into the fire with a piece of bamboo such

(18:09):
that it pops, but making a torch that is designed
to pop as it burns. Yes, that's that's my understanding
of it. Yes, it's easy to simply extrapolate our modern
enjoyment of such pops and bangs to ancient people's. And
I do think it's perfectly fair to assume this is
a large part of it. You know, like a startling
sound is amusing, and uh, you know, you start, you're

(18:31):
scared for a second, and then you're relieved and you're
laughing like that's I think that's just part of the
universal human experience, and it's been that way for for
a very long time. Yeah, I'm reminded of the psychological
attraction people have to popping bubble wrap? Why do people
like doing that so much? I think we hypothesized in
a previous episode of Invention that it might have something
to do with grooming instincts maybe, but back to pimple

(18:53):
popping and tick bursting, right exactly. But I think part
of it also, especially when you see children do it,
it seems a little it less like anxiety relieving grooming
behaviors with them and and more like a game of
Jack in the Box or Pop Goes the Weasel or
Peek a Boo or something. It's just repeatedly startling yourself
with the sound and enjoying it absolutely. And so I

(19:15):
think it again, it's perfectly fair to say this is
a large part of what we're talking about here. But
another part of the tradition is the use of loud
noises to frighten away uh spirits or monsters. Uh. The
more recent version of this is the idea of frightening
away the New Year's beast, the nun Shao. Now there's

(19:36):
some discussion about whether this is actually you know, how
how old this tradition goes back. There's some that say
that it's essentially a recent tradition that's popped up, and
this gets into you know, some of the the Chinese
New Year celebrations that most of us are familiar with seeing,
you know, the idea of like a lion dance taking
place and firecrackers going off, that sort of thing. But
it also correlates to an ancient tradition that Juand discusses,

(20:00):
the shan Zhao. According to the Han dynasty classic the
Book of Gods and Spirits, these strange creatures would harass
camp fires in the night, and they were also said
in some traditions to carry a disease that could cause
chills and fevers. So what you did is you use
bamboo firewood, because that would of course pop at regular

(20:21):
intervals and create these frightening noises that would keep these monsters, spirits, creatures,
whatever you want to call them, away from your fire.
So it is not just amusing to have exploding bamboo around,
but it's also somewhere between a real repellent of maybe
some kind of creature that would threaten your campfire, or
at least imagined as some kind of apotropaic magic to

(20:44):
keep the demons away. Yeah, exactly so. So obviously, quite unexpectedly,
goblins were popping up in the research, so I decided
to look a little deeper. Um. And one of one
of the sources we came across as a book by
Richard von blonde idled The Sinister Way, the Divine and
the Demonic and Chinese religious culture, and in it uh

(21:05):
he says that shan zhao has sometimes translated as mountain
goblins uh and described as being ape like in various ways. Uh.
And he says that basically these are quote a class
of petty demons, change link spirits inhabiting the wild mountains
and forests. Yeah. Overall he seems to characterize them as

(21:27):
a kind of a very classic type of monster. Actually,
the monster that in that embodies the chaos of the
wilderness as opposed to the order of civilization. Yeah. And
of course you see this in European traditions. You see
this uh in cultures around the world. Right. I mean
that the dark is frightening, the wilds are frightening, especially
if they're not your wilds. And that's something that he

(21:49):
points out of Von Glan points out that after the
loss of Northern China to foreign conquerors in three seventeen,
the Chinese rulers were displaced to the south where they
encounter or a dense, humid subtropical environment along with rugged mountains,
along with new wildlife and native people's. So he says

(22:09):
that this was to to the rulers of that have
that had come down from northern China, this was a
place of barbaric peoples, of savage spirits and uh. And
thus you see that it may be strengthening predispositions for
this sort of folkloric motif. Though then again, I wonder
how much, um, the idea of like mountain goblins that

(22:31):
are considered somewhat humanoids, somewhat ape like, might have been
inspired by encounters with actual wildlife like I know, of course,
gibbons traditionally occupied much of ancient China and there and
there's a lot of consciousness of gibbons in Chinese culture
and poetry. Yeah, absolutely, um And and apparently some some
reads on the shengs Au certainly point towards, you know,

(22:55):
actual apes as being at least part of it, you know,
because indeed, what do we know about out a lot
of monkeys species in the monkeys, especially in the wild,
is that they can be curious, they can be um,
they can be some a manner of a pest when
they encounter human activities, and uh, you know, I don't
know how much we should read into the idea of
of illness being caused by them, because you see this

(23:16):
a lot with mythical creatures, right and and mythical and
magical beings and magical people's they cause disease their way
of explaining illness in a pre germ theory world. But
at the same time, you know, obviously one can transmit
illnesses from uh, wild animals, so that could potentially be
a part of it. I guess. Uh. However, you do

(23:37):
see folks that go in an entirely cryptid direction with
all of this, and they're like, oh, well, this is
clearly uh you know, we're clearly talking about sasquatches. Here.
Was there an X Files episode about the chan Zio
I don't know. You're the one to tell me about
the whether there's an X Files episode or not. I
don't remember one. But you know, they they turned through

(23:57):
a lot of cryptids over the course of that show.
That's a lot of seasons to fill. At some point
they were even doing the Jersey Devil, so you know,
they were really really rooting around in the bottom of
the bucket. But but that does also point to you know,
you can point to plenty of other cultures that have
some sort of a wild man of the woods kind
of uh creature or multiple creatures in their mythology like

(24:20):
uh into a certain extent, a number of these could
be inspired by observances of ape creatures in the wild. Yeah, sure,
I mean that That's always one of the great mysteries
when you're dealing with mythical beasts is like what percent
of it is imagination and what percent is inspired by
something people saw, either like you know, seeing a person
and misunderstanding what you saw, or seeing some seeing wildlife

(24:42):
and misunderstanding. Yeah. Now, now von Glen points out that
there are other things that were sort of classified as
as also being shan zhao in essence. One of them
was this, uh, these entities called the Wutong Shin that
I think we talked about in the past and the
show because there in some ways in some versions of
them are comparable to incubi, demons and European traditions. But

(25:06):
but these are as you often see with with mythical
creatures and beings and um in cultures. The wutong Shan
end up like changing over time and become being more
like gods and being something that should be revered, whereas
Uh von Glen points out that the the Chanzhao goblins
just remain untransformed in cultural traditions. They remain these pesky

(25:29):
goblins of the wild. And one issue that I found
rather interesting here that I don't really have a firm
answer on is is why in some cases, like a
number of cases, they're described as ape like, but sometimes
they have inverted feet and then perhaps in some cases
a single leg. And that made me think of these
other cases of mono peds which are described in various traditions,

(25:52):
including by plenty of the elder uh the notion of
one legged wood spirits uh, that that one might encounter
in the wild. Again entirely speculative here, but I'm I
just wonder if that kind of concept could be inspired
by seeing the different locomotion of apes like gibbons who
walk or climb or hang with the aid of very

(26:13):
long arms. Yeah, or kind of like a a side
profile kind of issue where you're just looking at them
from the side and they they're like, oh, they're kind
of moving like a human might move if they had
one leg and a pair of crutches, that sort of thing. Um,
So you know that's always a possibility one of the uh.
And then also you could also throw in, well, it's

(26:34):
a minimally counterintuitive creature design, right, what I have not
two legs but one. Likewise, you could compare it to
congenital deformities in human beings. But but one interesting hypothesis
that I ran across was from the scholar carl A.
P Ruck, who proposed that at least some of these
might be connected to Vadic traditions involving soma um, which

(26:58):
of course is some soma. Was this essentially some sort
of drug that is described in ancient texts, and the
actual botanical reality of soma remains something of a mystery,
with explanations ranging from psilocybin to something like a fedra. Okay.
But but Ruck's proposition here is that this idea of

(27:19):
a one armed being in the woods is essentially tied
to a botanical description. Specifically, he wrote about shade Foot's,
a fabulous tribe from India who were thought to jump
about on a single foot that could be used as
a paracel uh and apparently the idea is that what
if this is uh, you know, it's an exaggerated um

(27:40):
uh anthropomorphic description of a plant that you would encounter
in the wild. I don't know, I don't have a
firm answer. What's an interesting idea. I'm trying to picture
it a plant that that could metaphorically be described as
a person with one foot who can also use their
foot as a parasol. I guess. I mean, so my
family recently went mushroom foraging and and also just sort

(28:05):
of identifying mushrooms, and you know, we have a number
of them. We have. The Old Man in the Woods
is one of The Old Man of the Woods is
one of the mushrooms you encounter, you know, the the
chicken or hen of the woods is another. So there's
a lot of the sort of thing that goes on
with the the naming of and certainly the non scientific
naming of various um organisms in the wild. So, you know,
it seems totally possible, even though I don't know that

(28:27):
there's actually any any evidence for it. Uh. If it's
it may just be pure speculation, but it's something to
think about. As for von Glann himself, he ultimately summarizes
that that he thinks, quote, it seems likely that these
demonic images derived from frightening encounters with denizens of the mountains,
both human and ape. Okay, so it might be just

(28:48):
sort of conflating of stories of people encountering gibbons, people
encountering other people they weren't familiar with, and it turns
into monster stories, but ultimately leads to this consciousness of
a thing can do to repel the monsters of the wild,
the monsters of the mountains, is that you can have
a bamboo torch that explodes and frightens and drives them off. Yeah,

(29:10):
you know, you may and and it's one of those
things which it makes sense if you're dealing with an
actual um frightening animal or you know, in the wild
makes the loud noises scared away. But also it's something
you can do against even ideas of darkness, right, more
supernatural premises about about the nature of reality. You know,
I am frightened, but hey, I can make a loud

(29:30):
noise and uh, and that's gonna that's at least something
there's something actually very instinctual. I think about the idea
of making noise when you are frightened, especially in the
dark or in the wild. You know, there's the old
expression whistling, whistling past the graveyard, um or you'll just
notice it in people when they start getting scared walking

(29:51):
around in a place, like kids sometimes maybe start talking louder,
or start talking to themselves, or snapping their fingers or
whistling or humming. We've got this natural sense that making
noises provide security. Yeah. I remember thinking this while watching
Um the movie Yet, the recent adaptation of Suphan King's
Yet you know, where these children are encountering this horrifying

(30:14):
supernatural entity, And it just kept thinking, like, oh, man,
if I encountered Pennywise the clown, I would just yell
at him. I would just yell at him. He wouldn't
even know what to do, you know, like that, like
that's one way you can diffuse the supernatural adversary of fear.
He didn't expect you to go on the offensive and
and and shout things at him. So yeah, maybe it's
connected to that. I don't know. Should we take a

(30:36):
break and then come back to talk more about the
invention of fireworks? Yes, we'll take a quick break for
the ad goblins, and then we'll be back with more content.
Thank Okay, we heard from the ad goblins, but we
we we use some popping devices to drive them away.
And now we're back into the history of proto fireworks
at least. Yeah. So, yeah, we've talked about proto fireworks,

(30:59):
but where to act shool fireworks into the picture. Things
that we can that we would actually look at, say
on a table and say, oh, look at that. That's
that's a firework, that's a firecracker, etcetera. So basically the
ideas that the Chinese simply augmented their fire and noisemaker
practices with chemically volatile substances. Once those substances were discovered. So,

(31:20):
as we discussed in our our Mash episodes, sulfur tipped
matches were already in use in China by the sixth
century CE. But the key to fireworks is, of course, uh,
this special array of chemicals that come together to to
to make gunpowder. Uh. There's of course saltpeter, which is
potassium nitrate, which was already being stuffed into bamboo during

(31:43):
the Southern Song period of twelve seventy nine in order
to create a more impressive bang with the bamboo and
between these two periods, potassium nitrate is said to have
emerged from the realm of Chinese alchemy. Yeah, so maybe
we should stop for a second to look at the
chemical properties of potassium nitrate and understand the role it
plays in the development of firecrackers. So back to the

(32:06):
principles of fire. You know, we've talked about a number
of times. What does fire need in order to burn?
It needs fuel, It needs heat, and it needs oxygen
because fire is a chemical reaction in which fuel reacts
with oxygen underheat to produce byproducts of primarily carbon dioxide
and water vapor with other trace elements and molecules given off.

(32:28):
And potassium nitrate or saltpeter can aid in the process
of combustion because of its chemical composition. So potassium nitrate
is made out of one nitrogen atom, one potassium atom,
and three oxygen atoms, and the key to its role
in combustion is is those three oxygen atoms. It is
an oxygen donor to the combustion process. Fire can only

(32:53):
burn as fast as it can access oxygen to react
with the fuel. Remember it's a reaction. Now, of course,
the atmosphere is full of oxygen so there's you know,
on Earth, it's pretty easy to get fire going if
you have enough heat and fuel because there's just free
oxygen all over the place. But the surface of a
burning log can still only access so much atmospheric oxygen

(33:17):
at once, right like you know, there it's giving off
chemicals and gases as it burns, of course, and then
there's it can really only react with the oxygen that's
sort of touching right along the edge of the log.
So there is there's a limit to the rate of
combustion imposed by the amount of oxygen available to react.
At the same time, potassium nitrate plays the role of

(33:40):
an oxidizer in the combustion reactions. It provides a ready
supply of extra oxygen, so in the presence of heat
and fuel, saltpeter will massively accelerate the speed at which
fuel burns, meaning you get often something beyond simple burning
and something that that qualifies as an explosion. And this

(34:01):
is where the Chinese alchemists come in now. And now
we refer to them as alchemists, but obviously we're using
we have Western alchemy and then we have Chinese alchemy,
and uh, they're directly comparable in a number of ways.
I mean, ultimately, you're dealing with with people on both
sides that are attempting to to figure out what substances
do and what they can achieve in various combinations with

(34:21):
each other. Right, And these practices are usually some combination
actually of real scientific study of the material properties of
different chemicals and a lot of magical beliefs mixed in. Yes,
And in this particular case, uh, it said that the
alchemist in general were attempting to create pills of immortality
or dan, which interestingly involved mixing up a compound of saltpeter, sulfur,

(34:44):
and charcoal. And you might be wondering why these particular
substance as well. For instance, sulfur was used for skin ailments,
saltpeter for fever. And uh, the thing is when you
hit just the right percentages here according to one for
for saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal, it would be like sixty one,
thirty and seven point six percent. Put it all together

(35:05):
and you have gunpowder. Yeah, And that gunpowder comes together
because you have mixed up the oxidizer which is the saltpeter,
the potassium nitrate, and the fuel which is the charcoal
and the sulfur, and so once you mix them all
together like that, they can create something that burns suddenly,
very rapidly. Now, in some traditions, some accounts, this discovery

(35:28):
is attributed to a particular individual, Sun sim Now, who
would have been born in UH five, and he was
the so called King of Medicine. He wrote um in
the translations of the titles essential Formulas for Emergencies worth
a thousand pieces of Gold and then a follow up

(35:49):
supplement to the Formulas of a thousand gold worth. And
even in translation, those are simply marvelous titles. So it's yeah,
that's great. My next novel should be called The Story
That's Worth a Million bucks. There you go, it's just
good marketing. Now, it seems like it's unlikely that that

(36:09):
this individual actually invented gunpowder, but he certainly recorded its
usage uh in particularly in a book Optimization of Alchemical
Processes by Sulfuric Method again translation, and it's it seemingly
the oldest known reference to gunpowder, and so we can
trace it roughly to his lifetime or you know, probably before.
And interestingly, with its medicinal roots, gunpowder continued to be

(36:33):
used as a curative property in um in in traditional
Chinese medicine for things like ring worm and various skin
issues into the sixteenth century. Yeah, and of course, saltpeter
had many uses outside the creation of say, elixirs of
immortality or or the creation of gunpowder. For example, saltpeter
has long been a preservative for certain kinds of foods.

(36:55):
You know, it's been a preservative for meats. In a way,
it's an elixir of immort reality for salami exactly. Now,
obviously gunpowder has its own enormous history, and it's gonna
end up playing a much bigger role in global affairs
in the centuries to follow. But the Chinese, this is essential,
essential to to point out, the Chinese realized its military

(37:18):
potential pretty early on, like during the Tang dynasty, and
it was compiled in Chinese military text by ten forty.
And this is notable because there's something of this this
myth in Western traditions that while the Chinese invention gunpowder
would ultimately require Western ingenuity to take off as a weapon,
The idea that the Chinese invented something but didn't really

(37:40):
understand what they'd invented, and nothing could really be further
from the truth, because they developed rockets, fire arrows, fire lances.
They were using UH long bamboo tubes that were packed
with with gunpowder as early as like even thirty two,
and there's evidence of bronze cannons as early as UH
thirteen thirty two or eleven twenty eight. Even so, the

(38:03):
use of military gunpowder advancements was very much a part
of the Chinese world at the time, and it's just
spread outward from there, transforming warfare everywhere it went. And
it's interesting to consider the ongoing relationship between recreational fireworks
and warfare because obviously the same chemicals can be used
for both. You know, you can use gunpowder to make

(38:26):
a harmless celebratory device or to make a cannon that
kills people. And it's interesting how this association has remained
in people's minds throughout the centuries because very often celebratory
fireworks not not always, but very often are used to
celebrate things like military victory. Is it's almost like they
call to mind the battle that you're thinking back on

(38:49):
and celebrating. Oh yeah, I mean, we see that in
the United States with the Star Spangled banner, which is
talking about stuff blowing up in the sky, and then
especially around the fourth of July, is uh is paired
with actual fireworks exploding in the sky. To get back
into this world of fireworks proper, we in the Chinese origins.
We can see how explosive and combustive substances come together

(39:12):
with boo jou. You know. But let's not forget the
other aspect of fireworks, the part that you you might
not think about as much when you buy a bunch
of fireworks or even when you set them off at night.
But the next day, when you go to clean up
your yard, Uh, you're going to encounter the reality of
all the paper and cardboard that makes a firework possible. Yeah.

(39:33):
It often looks like there has been like a battle
between armies of toilet paper rolls that just hacked each
other to bits. Yeah, because even today fireworks depend on
paper and cardboard. That tank you were describing earlier was
inevitably made out of cardboard and paper. But as we
explored in our recent two part on Stuff to with

(39:54):
your Mind about the invention of the book the history
of the book, paper was an expensive luxury in in
olden times. Uh. Chinese paper had already been around for centuries.
But but it was it was a it was a
high priced substance. This is not the kind of thing
you would just readily filled with gunpowder and set off
or burn. But then during the Song dynasty we see

(40:15):
the creation of bamboo paper, which was much more affordable,
and so this was finally paper that was cost effective
enough to use in fireworks. Uh, you know, pure fireworks,
the kind of fire not not just the things that
might amuse um, you know, individuals of great wealth, but
something that could be you know, a little more available
to everyone else. Yeah, there is. There's the main explosive charge,

(40:39):
and that's wrapped together with a timed ignition device, which
is the fuse. It used to be called the match.
Now a number of you are probably thinking, well, that's
a firecracker, and maybe that is essentially a bottle rocket.
But obviously there are plenty of more elaborate fireworks. I mean,
they're just thousands of types of fireworks today, and and

(41:00):
these the more traditional, these sort of exploding, sparkling, colorful fireworks.
This sort of thing didn't become popular in China until
apparently the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. During the last Dynastic
period of China, the Queen dynasty, and one writes that
some historians credit fireworks credit these type this type of
firework technology to a specialist by the name of Le

(41:21):
Tai Uh, saying that he basically invented these four when
he was asked by the Jong Jing emperor to create
something special. And the story goes that he's, you know,
he's been asked to create some sort of special fireworks.
He goes out and he notices all the colorful sparks
that are that are inside of a blackmith's shop as
the blacksmith is Uh is pounding away at the steel

(41:42):
and he decides to experiment with different sizes of iron
particles mixed with the gunpowder. Yeah, and this actually does
connect to the way that most colored fireworks displays are
created today. They're they're often produced by by packing fireworks
shells with these little pellets and as stars that include
different types of chemicals. Often metal salts that wind burned

(42:07):
create different colors. So, for example, red fireworks often have
some kind of strontium content like strontium carbonate, or orange
fireworks might have calcium chloride and so forth. Apparently, blue
fireworks are one of the hardest colors to make, and
that requires a copper or copper chloride content. But the
most common form of fireworks you see in big festival

(42:29):
displays today, you know, not the little firecrackers you set
off in your yard, but big festival displays. These would
generally use what might be known as the mortar or
the shell model. So you've got a core explosive charge
that's usually made out of black powder and a lift charge.
It burns quickly. It it expands and turns into heat
and gas. It shoots it up into the sky and

(42:51):
then it is the fuses time so that when it's
way up in the sky, it will reach the center
charge and then it will explode and shell will be
packed with all these little things, these little explosive balls
called stars, and the stars can be packed in special arrangements,
and the arrangements of the stars within the shell is

(43:11):
usually what gives rise to the patterns of the exploding fireworks.
And they're they're actually artisans who will make special fireworks
like custom packing of the stars inside to give you
the color you want in the shape of the explosion
you want. So you can get hearts, you can get
smiley faces or whatever, and I just got to share.
By the way, I found a Wikipedia article with one

(43:33):
of the best sentences in English I've ever read. I
was looking at this the other day. It's from a
Wiki article about pyrotechnic stars, and the sentence goes, pumped
stars are stars that have been pumped using a star pump.
I love that because, out of context, it's just a
sentence that says nothing. I was trying to think, are

(43:53):
there any other ways ways you could plug words into
that sentence structure to make it work? I was thinking,
wait a minute, cook to rice is rice that has
been cooked using a rice cooker. There you've done quite work, though,
because you can cook rice other ways. I don't know.
But it's star pump as it has only one function,
and that is two pump stars. It's true. Alright. On
that note, we're going to take one more break, but

(44:15):
when we come back we'll get into some of the
Western tradition of fireworks. Thank thank thank Alright, we're back.
So I wanted to look at a post on the
always Wonderful Medieval Manuscripts blog on the British Library website.
This post is by Alison Ray. I feel like I've
mentioned pieces by this blog on the show before. I

(44:37):
think we discussed an awesome one they had about anti
theft curses in medieval manuscripts. Yes, it's just a really
great blog to follow, and I'm actually going to reference
a couple of posts that I came across in this episode.
So this one talks about how fireworks have been a
popular source of entertainment in England since as early as
the fifteenth century. Ray writes that the first recorded use

(45:00):
of fireworks in England was at King Henry the Seventh
wedding celebration in fourteen eight six. And I have seen
this historical claim made all over the place, and I
was trying to find contemporary documentation, or at least the
earliest documentation of it I could, and I could not
find that. It makes me wonder how modern writers know this,

(45:20):
But I assumed that the British Library bloggers have their
their history sorted out, so I'll trust him on this one.
So the wedding of King Henry the Seventh. King Henry
was also known as Henry Tudor and his ascent to
the throne was the ultimate conclusion of the Wars of
the Roses, where the houses of Lancaster and York had
struggled for control of England for like three decades. This

(45:44):
is chronicled with some propagandistic slant in Shakespeare's play Richard
the Third. Of course, Richard the Third was the last
of the York kings. Henry had some kind of roughly
thirty seventh in line succession claim to the throne through
the line of lancast Her, but he really came to
power through some political maneuvering and military victory, so his

(46:06):
claim was of course through the Lancaster line. But he
apparently got in position for power by swearing to marry
Elizabeth of York, which would unite the two houses if
he was victorious and Richard. Richard the third had enemies
within his own house, so with some French support, Henry
the Seventh landed in Wales in fourteen eighty five. He

(46:27):
led an army against Richard's power center in London. Richard
took an army out to meet him. Henry and Richard's
forces fought a conclusive battle at Bosworth Field on August
two five, where Richard was killed in the fighting, allegedly
while trying to like strike deep behind enemy ranks and
kill Henry himself to in the war immediately, and Richard

(46:48):
the Third was apparently the last English king killed in battle.
So after the battle Henry is victorious, He's like, well, okay,
you know, I've basically got a claim to the throne
by succession. I just wanted battle, which means God must
want me to be king. So Henry was crowned at
the end of October fourteen eighty five, and true to
his promise, he married Elizabeth of York in January fourteen

(47:11):
eighty six. And this marriage was of greater than normal
political importance. It was more than just the pageantry of
a of a royal wedding. It was in some ways
the symbolic extinguishment of a dynastic war that had been
raging for about thirty years. So why not a little
extra celebration, Why not blow something up right. Ray's blog

(47:33):
post also points to a fourteenth century manuscript known as
the British Library royal Ms twelve b. Twenty five. This
is primarily a medical text. It talks about bodily humors,
herbal medicines, astrology, but it's got a recipe for fireworks,
specifically fireworks rockets, and the burning glass. And according to Ray,

(47:59):
the opening to the section on the recipes for combustion
begins with references quote to Greek fire, an incendiary weapon
first used by Byzantine forces against Arabic naval fleets steering
Sieges on Constantinople in the late seventh century. So I
think it's very interesting that a fourteenth century writer in
English would say, Okay, here's a recipe for making fun

(48:22):
recreational fireworks, but let's introduce it by talking about this
terror weapon. Yeah, yeah, the terror weapon of the of
the Byzantines, which which we have an entire episode on
in the vault if anyone wants to listen to it.
But apparently because of the danger posed by fireworks, the
manuscript accompanies its recipes with protective magic spells that you

(48:42):
can use against the fire. Quote. The protective charms against
fire invokes St. Column Seal also known as Columba or
column Kill, and st Agatha for protection. St Agatha was
a patron saint against fire, lightning, and volcanic eruption. Uh
protective charms may seem unorthodox to us today, but they

(49:05):
were often employed in the same manner as medical recipes
and religious prayers. And this is something we've talked about
on the show before. How In, in late medieval and
early modern writing in Europe, there's a lot of thinking
that just blends magic and naturalistic or scientific knowledge, as
if there were no real difference between them. You know,
here's how to make an explosive powder. Here's a magic

(49:27):
spell to cure warts. Here's a recipe for toothpaste. Here's
how to know if a witch is giving you a rash.
There's another British Library manuscript profile I wanted to mention,
this one by curator Maddie smith In. And this is
of a seventeenth century book called Pyrotechnica, written by a
gunner named John Babington. And it's the first book in

(49:49):
English that is known to be entirely about how to
make fireworks for fun. It's entirely a book about recreational fireworks. Now, again,
this is a much later work, maybe on us three
hundred years later than the previous manuscript. It is widely
attested that Queen Elizabeth the First of England loved fireworks.
And note that Queen Elizabeth the First is different from

(50:12):
Elizabeth of York, who married Henry the seventh Queen Elizabeth
the First ruled from fifteen fifty eight until her death
in sixteen oh three. I was looking for examples of
her legendary love of fireworks, and I came across a
letter written by a man named Lanahan describing the Queen's
visit to Kinnelworth Castle in fifteen seventy five. And lanaham

(50:34):
describes it like this quote. On the Sunday night, after
a warning piece or two, there was a blaze of
burning darts flying to and fro, beams of stars, coruscant streams,
and hail of fire sparks, lightnings of wildfire on the
water and on the land, flight and shot of thunderbolts,

(50:56):
all with such continuance, terror and vehemence. The heavens thundered,
the water surged, and the earth shook. Oh man, that's
that's that's that's a great description. Shades of deep purple,
but a great description. Well, you know, it doesn't it
doesn't sound fun. It sounds really scary. Yeah, well, I
mean that's that. Those were my earliest experiences of fireworks,

(51:18):
just being terrified. So, uh, you know, feeling a sense
of terror or safe terror is kind of part of it, right, yeah,
that might be true. Of course, Shakespeare mentions fireworks in
a number of his plays, or at least in one
or two plays. There's there's a scene in Love's Labor's Lost, uh,
where a character says, quote, the King would have me
present the Princess sweet Chuck with some delightful ostentation or

(51:41):
show or pageant or antique or firework. And apparently Queen
Elizabeth liked fireworks so much that she commissioned a lord
of fireworks to be in charge of the whole process
that would come to be known as the fire Master
of England, whose assistance were called green men because they

(52:01):
wore hats made out of leaves to protect their heads
from fire and sparks. So Queen Elizabeth had a pyromancer.
That's awesome, and they're running about in these uh, in
these green hats but you know, made out of like
green leaves. I mean that sounds very elvin. That reminds
me of what we discussed in the past about these

(52:23):
taboos against wearing green because that is the color of
the fairies. Yeah, totally. I think those ones we talked
about in the past, for specifically, uh, superstition about young
women wearing them or they would make the fairy princess
is jealous. But yeah, I mean, I don't know. If
you're already dealing with fire and fireworks for a living,
why not put some leaves on your head. But so, anyway,

(52:45):
back to this book Pyrotechnic by Babbington. It describes how
to make a number of regular shell style fireworks of
the kind we were talking about earlier, and how to
achieve different colors. Quote for stars of a blue color,
a combination of gun powder, saltpeter and sulfur VIV did
the trick. He then progresses to making silver and gold

(53:07):
rain firework wheels and fizz gigs a French firework that
fizzled before it exploded. Fizz gig. Yeah, this gig like
like in the Dark Crystal. But beyond that, Babington goes
on in his book to give instructions for these elaborate displays,
such as the dragon. The dragon was a giant wooden

(53:28):
frame in the shape of a winged serpent that was
filled and ornamented with all kinds of combustibles that would
make it breathe fire and spark with fury. And one
popular way of doing this dragon demonstration was to have
both a wooden dragon crammed with fireworks and either a
rival dragon or a figure of St. George, and then

(53:50):
you would make them fight. Uh so this is from Smith.
Quote in Pyrotechnica, Babbington instructs the reader to strap the
dragon and St. George together so that when a wheel
is turned quote, they will run furiously at each other.
They had to be well balanced, as otherwise quote they
would turn their heels upward, which would be a great

(54:12):
disgrace to the work and the workman. It sounds like
more of a disgrace that that sounds maybe like an
extreme safety hazard. You included a shot here of a
woodcut illustration from this book, and uh, I have to
say that, combined with the description, this is pure burning man,
like this is the exact spirit of that sort of
like a large scale pyro technical display. Yeah, exactly, this

(54:35):
is Elizabethan burning Man. But so there's a big question here, right, So,
if if fireworks were probably invented in China and we're
super popular with the English monarchy by the fifteen hundreds,
how did they make that journey? How did they get
from China to Europe and specifically early modern England well,
it turns out that the first known European to describe

(54:58):
the creation of black powder was Dr Mirabilis himself. Roger
Bacon uh the thirteenth century English philosopher proto scientist in
Franciscan friar and Dr Mirabilis I think it means technically
wonderful teacher in Latin, but I like to think of
him as doctor wonderful. So Roger Bacon was born somewhere

(55:20):
in southwest England, either I think in Somerset or in Gloucestershire,
between the years twelve fourteen and twelve twenty. More recent
sources places birth I think around twelve nineteen or twelve twenty,
and he became a brother of the Franciscan order and
a scholar of great esteem and controversy. In the modern day,
he has this reputation for being an early advocate of

(55:42):
something approaching scientific empiricism, the study of nature through observation
rather than just deductive principles about the divine order. Like
maybe you know what if Aristotle says something about nature
and then you do an experiment and discover that Aristotle
is wrong. I think a lot of people might had
the tendency to say like, well, you know you must

(56:02):
have done some throng aristotles probably right, aristotles above reproach right, yeah. Um.
So Bacon studied and wrote on language, on mathematics, on alchemy, astronomy,
and optics. You might remember in our Camera Obscura episode
of Invention we talked about how Bacon had read the
works of the eleventh century Arab scholar even al Haytham,

(56:24):
who described the principle of a pinhole camera for projecting
images into a dark room, and Bacon picked up on
this and conducted experiments based on al Heyatham's writings. He
apparently built or at least used a camera obscura chamber
for the purpose of safely observing solar eclipses in his lifetime.
But he also described the use of spectacles based on

(56:46):
glass lenses, which were not yet in wide use at
the time. Uh, He conducted alchemy experiments, and he speculated
on the idea of a flying machine. He kind of
had a reputation as something of a wonder worker or
a wizard. And again this is something that wasn't unheard
of for curious scholars of the medieval and early modern
period that the doctor Faustus kind of image Robert. You

(57:08):
might remember that one of the earliest theories on the
authorship of the Voyage Manuscript attributes the manuscript to Roger Bacon,
though I don't think we ever found any good evidence
supporting this claim. It seemed more like people just might
have thought, well, who's some messed up wizard who could
have created this weird book. I think the dating of
the actual materials put put the book as much later

(57:30):
than than Bacon's life. Yeah, I think if you could
make a better case for John Dee than you could
for Bacon. Right, But Bacon really did apparently advocate experimentalism,
though this doesn't mean he was the kind of like
skeptic materialist naturalist you might imagine today. It seems he
advocated an empirical or experimental approach to both natural science

(57:52):
and alchemy and magic, which you know, I can see
is that might have been a reasonable mindset if you
were living in thirteenth century England. But anyway, he produced
some important encyclopedias of learning, beginning with his Opus majis
Uh and following with some other I think other works
that were called like Opus Lesser or Opus Tertiary Uh

(58:13):
so where does the gunpowder come in? Well, in the
twelve forties and a couple of his major works, Bacon
just straight up described a recipe for making gunpowder as
seemingly out of nowhere. So I'm going to sign a
passage from the scholar Joseph Needham's work on Bacon and
gunpowder in in a in a book called Science and
Civilization in China from Cambridge University Press, nine seven, where

(58:36):
he combines a couple of nearly identical passages about gunpowder
from Bacon's Opus Majis and or Mayis and Opus Tertium together.
But first we should look at how Bacon introduces this section,
which is uh, he talks about Greek fire. He writes,
certain of these work by contact only, and so destroy

(58:58):
life malta or now up the which is a kind
of bitumen plentiful in the world, when projected upon a
man in armor, burns him up. Similarly, yellow petroleum i e.
Oil produced from the rocks, when properly prepared or distilled,
burns everything it meets by a consuming fire, not extinguishable

(59:18):
by water, and only with great difficulty by other things.
Certain inventions disturb the hearing to such a degree that
if they are set off suddenly at night with sufficient skill,
neither cities nor armies can endure them. No thunderclap can
compare with such terrifying noises, nor lightning playing among the clouds,
with such frightening flashes. And then um, and then he

(59:42):
goes on. So this is the combined two passages about
gunpowder itself. We have an example of these things that
act on the senses in the sound and fire of
that children's toy which is made in many diverse parts
of the world, i e. A device no bigger than
thumb from the violence of that salt called saltpeter, together

(01:00:04):
with sulfur and willow charcoal combined into a powder. So
horrible a sound is made by the bursting of a
thing so small, no more than a bit of parchment
containing it, that we find the ear assaulted by a
noise exceeding the roar of strong thunder, and a flash
brighter than the most brilliant lightning, especially if one has

(01:00:26):
taken unawares. This terrible flash is very alarming. If an
instrument of large size were used, no one could withstand
the noise and blinding light. And if the instrument were
made of solid material, the violence of the explosion would
be much greater. I love this. There are aspects of
it. It It maybe sound like an overstatement of the power

(01:00:46):
of a simple firework, but he does get at the
heart of it here. Well. Yeah, so this This is
Bacon in this work in the middle of the thirteenth century,
describing a totally accurate recipe for making an explosive charge. Remember,
he's got all of the ingredients we talked about in
the chemistry section earlier. He's got the fuel there, he's
got the sulfur, he's got the saltpeter as the oxidizer.

(01:01:08):
He says. You grind them together, you make a powder
out of them, and that's how you get this charge.
And then of course you pack it into to a
roll of parchment, he says, which parchment, being a rather
expensive material, also seems like maybe not a great use
for it. But I don't know what else would you
use at the time, I guess, but he describes it
as some kind of pre existing children's toy, without saying

(01:01:30):
where or when this toy would have been observed, and
ends with the unmistakable observation that this combustible powder could
obviously be used for violence could be used in warfare.
So a lot of historians claim that this is the
first time knowledge of black powder is acknowledged anywhere in Europe.
But where did Bacon get this idea from? He doesn't

(01:01:52):
claim to have come up with it himself. Instead, he
speaks of this toy from other parts of the world
without saying where. So there's an interesting question of cross
fertilization of ideas here. Uh Needham Joseph Needham, in his
book argues that there is ample reason for thinking that
Chinese firecrackers and general explosive chemistry would have made their

(01:02:13):
way back to Europe by around the time Bacon was
writing uh So Needham rights quote. This description inescapably suggests
to us that a sample of Chinese crackers had come
into Roger Bacon's possession and that he knew what the
constituents of the mixture were inside them by twelve sixty seven.
That would have been perfectly possible for his fellow friars

(01:02:35):
had been traveling back and forth between Western Europe and
the Mongol court at Kara Koran since twelve forty five,
when the Franciscan John of Plano Caprini had been sent
as an envoy from Innocent the Fourth, that's Pope Innocent
the Fourth to the Great Khan Uh. And then he
he documents plenty of other recorded instances of of Franciscans

(01:02:57):
and Dominicans and other Europeans travel back and forth to
China to the Mongol court, and says that there's just
really no problem imagining that someone maybe maybe knowing of
Roger Bacon and saying, hey, he's this kind of like
out there wizard guy. He he would enjoy a chemical
curiosity from the other side of the world. Let's bring

(01:03:18):
some firecrackers back for for doctor Wonderful to look at. Yeah,
now this would make perfect sense. Everything lines lines up here, uh,
the Chinese to the Mongols and then via these uh,
these these traveling um uh clergyman back to Europe. But
I would say it also seems possible that firecracker chemistry
could have entered late medieval Europe through the Arab world,

(01:03:40):
which was a conduit for a lot of scientific and
technological knowledge from both farther East stand from the Arab
world itself, but also from the lost libraries of antiquity
that you know, a lot of knowledge came back into
Europe that way. Yeah, And I think that's also where
we see more of a direct military stream of ideas
from China than down through UH through a Central Asia

(01:04:01):
and UH and into the Middle East. And this instance
of of Bacon making this first record of of a
recipe for gunpowder in Europe is interesting and how it
uh feeds into how we should think about the role
of Roger Bacon in in the history of science and stuff,
because despite his reputation for experimentation, which he did of

(01:04:21):
course support in principle, Bacon's actual legacy in the history
of knowledge might just as well be understood as one
of voraciousness for sources of learning far and wide as
much as it was for actual experimentation. I mean, again,
the idea is not that Bacon was doing chemistry experiments
and discovered how to make gunpowder. He probably got a

(01:04:45):
firecracker from somewhere that had been made based on Chinese
technology and then either was told or figured out how
it worked. But that's a very important role in the
history of knowledge as well. Just being like a great
collector of ideas for anywhere you can get them, that's right,
Just simply being exceedingly well read in the time where

(01:05:05):
where relatively few individuals were in the grand scheme of things, right,
So what came of Bacon's publishing on the subject of gunpowder. Well,
some sources alleged that later in his life Roger Bacon
suffered trouble of the roughly inquisitional sort, that he was
imprisoned in the late twelve seventies by his brothers in

(01:05:27):
the Franciscan Order. From what I can tell, the earliest
record of this imprisonment comes from a work published in
the thirteen seventies, so this would have been around a
hundred years after the supposed events, called Chronicle of the
twenty four Ministers General of the Franciscan's. So I think
it's not a hundred percent clear that Bacon really was jailed.

(01:05:47):
We don't have an autobiographical account or anything, but it
is widely alleged, and if he was in fact thrown
into prison, the exact cause of this imprisonment is not clear.
I've seen it alleged interials by the Royal Society of
Chemistry in the UK that Bacon's description of and possible
experiments with gunpowder were what got him into trouble with

(01:06:09):
the church. Since quote only God could produce thunder and lightning.
But but I haven't really found any evidence that looks
very good for this specific technological blasphemy being the cause
of his imprisonment. Apparently the historical record is vague. We're
told that it was due to something simply translated as
suspected novelties in his teachings, And I guess it's not

(01:06:33):
out of the question that this could refer to technology
or something like gunpowder, But it could also just refer
to heretical religious beliefs having to do with the end
of the world and uh, the church modeling itself on
the the idea of the poverty of Christ. Or it
could have to do with reliance on contemporary prophecies or astrology.

(01:06:53):
Just seems like there are a lot of things you
could get in trouble, a lot of kinds of thought
crime at the time, and it doesn't necessarily need to
be gunpowder that got him into trouble, right, Yeah, there
there there's so many other established paths to alleged heresy
without having to draw a new line to gunpowder here.
But but of course it wasn't long after Bacon's writings

(01:07:13):
that you really start to see for example, firearm technology
being experimented within Europe, so so that this was sort
of a a germanal point in the transfer of knowledge
about gunpowder to Europe. And then, of course we've already
talked about all the ways that recreational fireworks became popular
in the following centuries. It's interesting again we come back

(01:07:35):
to this idea of gunpowder as being one of these
prime inventions. We can look at it and and we can
see like the way it is used to harm other people,
in the way it is used as pure amusement, the
dual nature of of invention. Right. But then also we're
we're talking about how it travels, and so it seems
entirely possible that we're looking in the situation where it
is via novelty that the technology more readily travels to

(01:07:59):
the West. Uh, for a number of reasons, one of
which being that, uh, you know, a culture is going
to be far less willing to share the secrets of
its weaponry. Um, but in terms of its mere enjoyments, Uh,
that that that may travel a little easier. Yeah, I
can totally see that. Uh. You know something that's interesting.
I was reading about fireworks in the contemporary world Obviously,

(01:08:21):
we know that in the United States people tend to
use a lot of firecrackers and fireworks around the Independence Day,
the fourth of July. But I was reading that even today,
the vast majority of the world's fireworks are still made
in China. I was reading an article on CNN that
reported that as of twenty sixteen, over nine percent of

(01:08:41):
the fireworks used on American Independence Day were manufactured in China.
And there's still all kinds of artisans and crafts people
working in China that like hand make fireworks. That that
is impressive to think about that because generally, when I
think of fireworks, I think of the seemingly mass produced
exam amples that that one finds that fireworks stores and

(01:09:02):
firework tents, right, Yeah, and I'm sure, I'm sure some
fireworks are mass produced by a more automated process. But uh,
but yeah, I was watching some short documentary segments about
actually like companies that still just have basically people making
them by hand using sort of hand cranked machinery and stuff. Yeah,
you certainly don't see any here in the States at

(01:09:24):
farmers markets where someone is like, these are my fireworks.
I made these, you can watch me make them. I
roll my own Roman candles, etcetera. But maybe I'm just
going to the wrong farmers markets. Who knows. No, this
is an interesting point you raise. Rachel and I were
actually talking about this here at the house, about whether
you know you would have like craft fireworks in the

(01:09:44):
same way you see, I don't know so much of
an artisanal craft movement with other types of products and
food items these days. Yeah, and and would you would
one trust that more or less? I feel like my
instinct and maybe this is by virtue of of just
not being um accustomed to it, I feel like I
would be suspicious of of handmade fireworks that just some

(01:10:07):
random stranger made um, I don't know. And maybe again
just because it's something I've I've not encountered before. Personally,
I guess it's I want there to be some sort
of like factory standard for my explosives. I guess right.
You want to You want to know that it's been
through the inspections or something. Yeah. Isn't it weird that
our intuitions sometimes work that way? You think, like a

(01:10:28):
mass produced item, that that seems safer, that seems like, uh,
that seems like it's been through a process. I would
love to hear from anyone out there who makes their
own fireworks or know someone who does, for any insight
into this, because just I haven't researched this in full,
but just glancing around, it looks like there are advocates

(01:10:49):
out there for making your own fireworks and uh and
and even doing so safely. Um, but this is just
a whole world I have no exposure to. Well, quick
liability show. We're not advising people to do that. No, no,
we are not advising you to make your own fireworks.
Just if you are, if you already have knowledge of
this world, let us know about it. I would like

(01:11:11):
to learn more. I would not like to to buy
any of them, though. You know what I want to
know from an expert on fireworks is whether pump stars
or stars that have been pumped using a star pump
or not? Yeah? And then how do you make the
star pump? Do you have to? Is there something like
you made from like residue from pumping a star? I
don't know. Could all be interconnected? The star pump sounds

(01:11:33):
like a wonderful science fiction device. It does. Yeah, some
sort of crazy Kardashiev level two technology bust about the
star Pump. But anyway, uh, that is it for fireworks
for this episode. Hopefully we you know, provided some additional
insight into the the the origin of fireworks and how

(01:11:54):
this technology then took off in Western Europe as well.
So a little more to think about than if you
find yourself staring up at the sky in the next
few months, in the next some type point over the
next year and watching these various colorful, glittering explosions take place, uh,
you know, understanding what what is chemically going on and

(01:12:15):
also what is uh culturally and historically going on before you.
In the meantime, if you would like to check out
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(01:12:35):
just tell other human beings about us next time you
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couch your fancy. That's right, b our Star Pumps anyway,
huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
with us with feedback on this episode or any other,

(01:12:56):
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(01:13:17):
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