History of Gunpowder
History of GunpowderGUNPOWDER
Gunpowder is the oldest of all explosives. It was used by the ancient
Chinese, Arabs, and people of India first. But exact directions on how to make
it were not known to the western World until 1242, when Roger Bacon of Oxford
University, in England published a book in which he told the ways to make
gunpowder. Today gunpowder is not used as much as more powerful explosives
After Roger Bacon published his formula for gunpowder, Berthold
Schwarz, a German monk, developed it as a practical explosive in the thirteen
hundreds. Schwarz is said to have invented a firearm which exploded shells by
the action of gunpowder. Gunpowder was being used in cannons as early as
thirteen forty-six. At that time, gunpowder was actually in powder form. It had to
be loaded carefully into the cannon, so that the charge would be packed
properly. If it were packed too tightly, the flame would not light the powder
because it couldn't get enough oxygen. But if it were packed too loosely, it
couldn't build up enough gas forces to push the cannonball to it's target.
A new way to make gunpowder into grains, instead of powder, was
invented in the fourteen hundreds. In this method you would moisten it and
pound it into a cake. Then it was broken into small bits and put into a sieve to be
sifted. The pieces that came through the sieve were different shapes and would
not fit together well enough to pack tightly, so that careful packing of a cannon
was not necessary.
When a long-barreled, rifled cannon came into use, it became necessary
to slow down the burning rate of the gunpowder. Its swift explosive force would
often burst the barrel of the gun, causing the man who fired it to be in almost as
much danger as the man he was attempting to shoot. Captain Rodman of the
United States Army finally developed a gunpowder that was made into grains
shaped into hexagonal prisms. These prisms were large and had several
rounded parallel grooves in them. When the prisms were placed end to end,
these grooves fitted to make a continuous channel. The flame burned outward
from these grooves and inward from the surface of the prisms. This kept up a
continuous flow of gases for long periods, and caused a long, slow push on the
shell. As a result, this kind of explosions could hurl the shell long distance.
Smokeless powder was invented in eighteen eighty-four, and had replaced
gunpowder for use in firing shells by the early nineteen hundreds. But
gunpowder was still made in large quantities in the United States for...
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