Gun Powder

Third great Chinese invention is gunpowder. Everything from Guy Fawke's night fireworks to modern artillery shells owes their origin to this. Ancient necromancers searching for the elixir of everlasting life on behalf of the Emperor discovered that mixtures of certain fuels and ores could, if mixed in the right proportions and heated, produce an explosion. This led in time to the discovery of gunpowder. In 1044 Zeng Gongliang wrote “The Collection of the Most Important Military Techniques”, and in this text he recorded three formulae for gunpowder. Each was based on saltpetre (potassium nitrate), sulphur and charcoal. Joseph Needham identified these as the earliest formulae for what we now know as gunpowder. The formula for gunpowder reached the Arab world in the 12th Century and Europe in the 14th century. Common folklore states that gunpowder was first used for entertainment only, with fireworks, but the military potential was soon exploited. Indeed the earliest known illustration of a cannon dating from around 1127 was found in China, the time of the changeover from the Northern Song Dynasty to the Southern Song Dynasty. This was 150 years earlier than the cannon were developed in the west. The Song people also used gunpowder to make fire lances, or flamethrowers, and anti-personnel mines (for which we might be less grateful!). By the end of the Song Dynasty the Chinese had invented multi-stage rockets. In a way this could be seen as the idea behind the rocket, which put a man on the moon. Joseph Needham also suggests that the idea of an explosion in a self-contained cylinder inspired in time the internal combustion engine.

So how did gunpowder move from East to West? Although the Song Dynasty was not particularly strong, its invention of gunpowder enabled the Chinese to repel the Mongols for decades. But eventually the Mongols were able to capture Chinese gunpowder makers and turn gunpowder back on the Chinese. The Chinese experts were employed in the Mongol