GUNPOWDER



GUNPOWDER

Group #5:

Holly Deegan

Robert Aberdeen

Keith Nunnink

Patrick Dixon

The history of Gunpowder can be traced as far back as 1200 AD in the writings of Abd Allah, an Arabian writer. Though the progression has evolved greatly from its original roots, one thing still exists, gunpowder is continuing to evolve. The First Foot Guards, a Revolutionary War reenactment group based in Boston, MA has created a website dedicated to the chronology of Gunpowder, or better known as Black Powder. This portion of the paper will look at the chronology of Black Powder, highlighting many of the important advancements throughout history.

Throughout the course of its history, Gunpowder has had seventeen major advancements according to The First Foot Guards. Dates and countries can break down these seventeen advancements:

1200, Middle East-Development of Flashing Powder

1250, Middle East-Description of Black Powder by Marcus Graecus

1268, England-Description by Roger Bacon

1350, England-Change in Standard Composition

1429, Europe- Development of Corned Powder

1675, United States-First Known Domestic Powder Production

1800, General-Change in Standard Composition

1804, United States-Dupont Powder Mill Established

1810, United States-Dupont Becomes America’s Largest Powder Producer

1825, Europe-Development of Granulations for Specific Purposes

1860, United States-Dominant Suppliers to the Union Forces

1862, United States-Suppliers to the Confederate Forces

1864, United States-Western US Powder Production

1894, United States-Military Drops Black Powder as Principle Small Arms Propellant

1970, United States-Pyrodex Black Powder Substitute Developed

1975, United States-Gearhart-Owens Begins Black Powder Production

The Present, Global-Development of Black Powder Still Has Not Ceased!

(The First Foot Guards)

With the seventeen advancements listed, there are three that need to be looked at more in depth.

The first major advancement would be the actual development of flashing powder, 1200, in the Middle East. The main ingredient in Black Powder, Saltpetre, appeared in the writings of Arabian writer Abd Allah. Though many have thought that Marco Polo was the first to bring Black Powder back from his trades, it was has been proven that this was not the case. The ruler of China, Mongol Kublai’s Khan and his brother, Hugul, the ruler of Persia were at the heart of the trade route by both land and sea. With the trade route between China and Persia, it is thought that the exchange of Black Powder was already taking place before Polo returned home from his travels. The second major advancement with Black Powder would be the Development of Corned Powder in Europe, 1429. According to The First Foot Guards:

The mechanical mixture of the ingredients was changed to a form in which the elements would not separate. This was accomplished by mixing the ingredients as uniformly as possible, and then wetting it into clumps. These clumps were then mechanically broken up (a dangerous task) into kernels. Hence the term Corning.

(The First Foot Guards, pg.4)

This process has helped to revolutionize Black Powder into what it is today.

Lastly, the third major advancement with Black Powder occurred in 1970 in the United States with the Pyrodex Black Powder Substitute Development. The First Foot Guards tell us that:

Dan Pawlak, in conjunction with Hornady Bullet Co., produced a viable substitute for black powder. While still smoking, and somewhat hygroscopic (moisture absorbing), it produces less fouling, and is NOT classified as an explosive by U.S. government. The latter is important concerning restrictions and cost of shipping.” (The First Foot Guards, pg. 9)

This advancement has helped not only to create a different type of Black Powder, but it has also helped to change the mindset of many who believe that Black Powder is a dangerous explosive. The latter, of course, has been proven wrong, but the evolution to maintain and recreate a non-explosive Black Powder is still the driving force in the manufacturing industry today.

As has been proven throughout the history of Gun Powder, or better known as Black Powder, many advancements have helped to create a safer product for the consumers. As technology continues to increase, the possibilities are endless in the world of Black Powder.

There are many uses for gunpowder beyond artillery and weapons. Gunpowder has been used to make items such as fireworks and flares by the Chinese for centuries. Gunpowder has also been used in things such as medicine and alchemy. In medieval times, gunpowder was an element that was believed to turn non-precious elements into gold. We now know that this is scientifically impossible. However, it gives insight into just how versatile the uses for gunpowder have been in the past. Gunpowder is also believed to have mystical elements that are used in magic and voodoo. In voodoo, it is used as an agent of magical protection in spiritual baths. It is also used as an ingredient in spells of love or money. It is used in these spells when the reaction from the spell is needed quickly. Of course, there are also some “explosive” spells in which gunpowder is used as well.

There are many practical uses for gunpowder. In aerospace technology, it is used for ejection seats as well as separation devices during rocket stages. In agriculture, gunpowder is primarily used for tree and stump removal.

In artwork, there are uses for gunpowder as well. Many people have no idea that gunpowder was used in the creation of Mount Rushmore. It is a very effective tool in mountain carving along with metal-clad art. Gunpowder is also used for coal blasting, excavation, and creating underwater channels and dredging.

Gunpowder even has uses in food preparation. It is a great meat tenderizer. It has uses in medicine such as fracturing kidney stones and gall stones. Even certain medicines have gunpowder as an ingredient.

In law enforcement, gunpowder is used for many things beyond weaponry. It has uses such as exploding dye capsules. These are effective deterrents for things such as bank robbery. Even certain security systems apply gunpowder to deter theft and related acts.

In labor fields, gunpowder is used for making hand tools that are made of various types of metals. This is because gunpowder can actually harden metal. This lends it to having a role in the railroad industry, the process used to harden the train tracks. On the other side of the coin, with it’s explosive capabilities, gunpowder can be used to remove railroad track parts.

Another great use for gunpowder is demolition. It is very effective in the demolishing of buildings, bridges, chimneys and towers.

In the United States, 67% of explosives are used for coal mining, 14% are used towards non-metal mines and quarries, metal mining consumes 10%, construction uses 7%, and all other uses consume 3%.

Gunpowder even has uses such as the production of man-made diamonds, pyrotechnics, sport shooting, logging, coal blasting, fire fighting, forestry, rocketry, seismic exploration, and quarrying. It is very tough to try and imagine what the world would be like without gunpowder. With so many uses, it almost appears that the human race would be helpless without it.

Some may consider gunpowder the first form of explosives. Nowadays, it is classified as a low explosive. It may seem like a primitive form compared to what scientists and chemists have created in today’s world, but in the beginning, gunpowder was state-of-the-art. Gunpowder itself has advanced over time. “Black powder, which was invented by the Chinese, was the only widely-known and used practical explosive until the 20th Century. At the end of the 19th Century smokeless powder replaced black powder and is used in all modern guns” (Gunpowder 1).

As time went on, explosives with larger blasting capacities were needed, and in some instances, maybe even wanted. When it came to blasting through mountain-sides or other tougher, more durable substances, high explosives and blasting agents such as nitroglycerine, dynamite, TNT, and C4 were developed and are implemented where gunpowder is inadequate, such as large scale military weaponry, safecracking, demolition both above and underwater, and in areas where severe heat could ignite gunpowder.

Nitroglycerine is quite possibly the most unstable of explosives. “Nitroglycerine is a heavy, oily liquid that’s clear as water and is the primary ingredient in dynamite, but the commercial product is straw-colored. Nitroglycerine was discovered in 1846 by Italian chemist Ascanio Sobrero” (World Book N-O 431). In today’s medicine, “doctors use nitroglycerine to treat certain heart and blood-circulation diseases, such as Coronary artery disease” (World Book N-O 431). Nitroglycerine is highly unreliable when detonated, so “in 1864 Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel obtained a patent on a detonating cap of mercury fulminate which proved ideal for exploding nitroglycerine, and in 1867 Nobel invented dynamite” (World Book N-O 431).

Dynamite is made up of nitroglycerine and kieselguhr, a type of chalky earth. The “kieselguhr is a porous, absorbent material that soaks up the nitroglycerine” (World Book D 397), making it more safely handled than pure nitroglycerine. However, after so long dynamite begins leaking, or sweating out the nitroglycerine. “Ammonia dynamite and ammonia gelatin, developed in the early 1900's both replaced their predecessors, straight dynamite and straight gelatin. Ammonia dynamite emits cooler gases and can sustain extreme heat whereas straight dynamite could detonate. Ammonia gelatin supercedes straight gelatin because it is waterproof” (World Book D 397).

With the military and construction companies ordering large quantities of dynamite because of it’s safety over pure nitroglycerine, Nobel directed that his estate be amassed to fund what is known as the Nobel Prize. The award is given to those who created or discovered something ingenious that benefits humanity, which is what dynamite did. It was less easily apt to explode than pure nitroglycerine, which made it much safer to handle.

“TNT has been the most conventional military explosive during the 20th century, with its first usage in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905" (Explosive 1). With great moldability since it melts at a relatively low temperature, fairly high detonating resistance to heat, and the fact it has an incredibly long shelf life, “TNT is chiefly used as the explosive charge for shells and bombs” (World Book T 303).

Nitroglycerine, dynamite, and TNT are not only chemical explosives, but they are classified as the primary explosives in the chemical category. C4 and Semtex are different in that they are plastic explosives. C4 was developed by the U.S. military during World War II. “Plastic explosives typically consist of an explosive mixed with an oil or wax plastic resin, such as C4, which is plasticized RDX” (TNT 2). Plastic explosives are extremely stable. “Lighting C4 with a match will only cause it to burn slowly, like a piece of wood, and shooting the explosive with a rifle won’t trigger the reaction” (How C4 Works 1). With a modelling clay appearance and texture, C4 is moldable and is largely used in demolition and warfare. Terrorists’ prime choice of explosive is C4 or other plastic explosives because they are difficult, if not impossible to detonate accidentally, and arduous to detect.

Not fifty years ago, any form of gunpowder or explosive was made specially by trained chemists. As explosives’ complexity increased, the training needed to make them didn’t. “Clandestine labs that manufacture drugs and explosives may be located in Skid Row motels or luxury resorts, housing projects or multimillion-dollar homes, and tents in the wilderness or buildings in congested urban areas” (Christian v). The equipment employed could range from “complex scientific equipment and exotic chemicals or simple kitchen utensils and chemicals purchased at a local grocery or hardware store” (Christian v). Terrorist activity can easily hold a city or community hostage through the threatened use of explosives just as an international group directing their hostility toward a nation. Such examples of each of these situations include “the first and second World Trade Center bombings, the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, and the shootings of Columbine High School in Colorado” (Christian v).

The extent to which gunpowder has shaped culture, society and history cannot be measured. The world has not been the same since the discovery of ammonium nitrate, what is now known as fertilizer. Ammonium nitrate was discovered in nothing less than a pig pen. Pig excrement that lied in a pen was continuously urinated of and aerated by the pigs stepping through it. The nitrogen in the excrement and the ammonia in the urine fused to form this explosive material. No, pigs did not begin exploding in their pens, for the compound needed refinement to take on its full effects. Chinese alchemists and pharmacists played with the compound until they came up with a better alternative, potassium nitrate, or gunpowder (Burke).

Now try to imagine the world without gunpowder. You have already learned that gunpowder can be used for more than explosives, but would your world exist as it is today without it? No. Gunpowder has had effects on many of the things we use every day. Gunpowder has served as a trigger which has spawned many innovations, excluding war materials. However, it is weaponry that is most easily explained and it is weaponry from where this story will begin.

Gunpowder changed forever the ways in which wars are fought. Centuries ago armies had lines of archers, cavalry and infantry. Well, the poor infantry had to run to the center of the battlefield and clobber each other while dodging arrows and men on horseback. Gunpowder that was used in muskets led to a longer line of men who could fire a single shot at the opposition (Burke). This was a terrific advancement, except that after the one shot they had to run to the center of the battlefield and clobber each other.

This led to two lines of gunmen, followed by three. With three lines of gunmen, one line could fire a shot, rotate to the back and reload, take aim and fire again. There were three steps to the process allowing the infantry to stay away from the center of the battlefield, where all the clobbering took place. This led to larger armies covering greater land masses. This also led to fewer casualties.

The best way to keep an effective army is to keep it happy and healthy. Napoleon knew this and had to find a way to do this when his army was conquering Europe and Northern Africa. He was running out of food for his men and could not find enough in the villages they raided. Napoleon remembered the sturdiness of the container of his favorite beverage, Champaign. He ordered men to cook food and store it in these bottles for the troops to carry with them (Burke).

The men who did this wrote about it in a book, which landed in the hands of a French entrepreneur, and a bad one at that. This Frenchman owed money to his British investors and repaid them in the form of that book. These financiers applied the book to one of their other ventures, a tinning company (Burke). Can you guess what happened? Canned food was created in almost the same form it is today, due to gunpowder.

Another story follows the trend of gunpowder’s involvement in warfare. This time it involves cannons. Before cannons, castles were extremely difficult to break into because they had but one door. You see, at this time there were already guns and these guns would keep invaders at bay. When the cannon was invented, invaders could hurry to the rounded corners of the castles and be out of the line of fire from the guns. There the invaders would use the cannon to blast a new opening and would take the castle (Burke). Castles now had to be redesigned and they did so by filling out the rounded parts to points, the way ramparts are today, and have been for hundreds of years. Now the invaders could be shot at.

A good use of these pointed ramparts was to allow for cannon crossfire aimed at armies and ships. Because these armies and ships would be at different distances every time, a tool was created to measure the arc at which the cannon should be fired (Burke). This same tool was used to create the straighter streets that were needed to bring more cannons to the ramparts. Because the tool was so useful in creating straighter streets, it was useful in measuring crooked streets, which led to better mapmaking (Burke). This tool was a primitive form of the tool survey crews use every day for road and building construction.

If you connected the dots, and truly looked at history as a scattered pattern of events in which one invention relies on a previous invention even though they seemingly have nothing to do with one another, you would see how gunpowder has changed the world. Gunpowder is a trigger that has shaped the world to what it is today. Gunpowder is the reason we speak English in America instead of French, German, Spanish or Chinese. Gunpowder has made culture and society what it is today. This invention has shaped the world.

Annotated Bibliography

Christian, D R. Field Guide to Clandestine Laboratory Identification and Investigation. Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2000.

This book discusses the shift of the manufacturing of all types of explosives from commercial factories and laboratories to housing projects, resorts, private homes, and even tents. The author is a very reliable source, having spent 15 years with the Arizona Department of Public Safety Crime Laboratory, specializing in forensic chemistry and analysis and is currently the Forensic Science Development Coordinator for the Department of Justice’s ICITAP (International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program).

Connections. Burke, James. Ambrose Video, 2001

Connections is a ten volumes series made in 1978 that turned science, technology and history into a detective story. Each volume begins with a single invention and lists the web of connections that invention has been involved with, one way or another. The material is not necessarily fact, just the opinion of Burke. He does however use logic to back his claims. Burke was educated at Oxford and holds honorary doctorate degrees. He has produced other series similar to Connections that tell similar stories about the impact of inventions. He produces scientific programs for the BBC and has written a monthly column for Scientific American.

“Explosive.” Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. 1997. 11 March 2005.

This website contains information on the general categories and differences of explosives, brief histories on the primary explosives, and the uses of some of the explosives presented within the site.

“Gunpowder.” Wikipedia. 21 February 2005. 23 February 2005.

Provided was a definition of gunpowder, the distinguishment of the different gunpowder types and reasoning why gunpowder is more suited for firearms whereas explosives are more suitable for shattering rock or fortifications.

“Gunpowder Plot, The.” BBC 8 March, 2005.

This website discusses the plot that was set in 1603 by the British Catholics to destroy the House of Lords by placing 36 barrels of gunpowder under the House of Lords. This plot ultimately failed because of other reasons, but it does show the power that Gunpowder has.

“History of Black Powder.” The First Foot Guard. 8 March 2005.

This website provide a lot of information on the history and the origin of Black Powder. They included a chronology of Black Powder and discussed what the significance of the advancement was.

“How C4 Works.” How Stuff Works, Inc. 1998. 11 March 2005.

This site was very interesting. It contained notes and information including the first usage and development of C4, it’s chemical properties, visual and textile descriptions of the explosive, and what kind of role it plays in today’s society.

Kelly, Jack. Gunpowder, Alchemy, Bombards and Pyrotechnics: The History of the

Explosive that Changed the World. Massachusetts: Basic Books, 2004.

This book offered a wealth of information concerning the history of “one of humanity’s most critical inventions.” They also discuss how Gunpowder was used by many famous individuals throughout history.

Plimpton, George. Fireworks: A History and Celebration. New York: Doubleday

& Company, INC. 1984.

This book provided information on the history of fireworks and the importance that Gunpowder plays in the detonation of fireworks.

“Trinitrotoluene-TNT.” 23 February 2005.

The site was very descriptive and informative, yet there was no author or copyright as to who wrote it and when. It goes into detail how trinitrotoluene, or TNT is structured and it’s chemical formula and composition. It discusses the pros and cons of TNT compared to other explosive materials and the statistical blast pressure and speed TNT possesses when detonated in accordance with the multiple fold increase of volume.

“World Book Encyclopedia, The: D.” World Book, Inc. Chicago: World Book, Inc., 1992.

This encyclopedia provides a brief history, general description, and components included in dynamite.

“World Book Encyclopedia, The: N-O.” World Book, Inc. Chicago: World Book, Inc., 1992.

This encyclopedia provides a brief history, general description, and components included in nitroglycerine.

“World Book Encyclopedia, The: T.” World Book, Inc. Chicago: World Book, Inc., 1992.

This encyclopedia provides a brief history, general description, and components included in TNT.

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