The Invention of Fireworks

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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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, 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, 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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

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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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,

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 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 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 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 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 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,

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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

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

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

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, 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

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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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

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

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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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

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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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

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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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

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

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 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 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 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, 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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

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, 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

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 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 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 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

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.

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 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 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. 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 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 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

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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 also what is uh culturally and historically going on before you.

In the meantime, if you would like to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts and wherever that happens to be. You can help us out by rating, reviewing, and subscribing. Uh those are the three acts of kindness you can do to help out the show. But also just tell other human beings about us next time you need to recommend a podcast, uh, you know, maybe mentioned an episode of Stuff to Blow your Mind that to

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, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hi, you can mail us at contact. That's Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your

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