A Blast from the Past: The History of Fireworks

Ever wonder where fireworks first exploded onto the world scene? So do the historians who write about the history of weapons and other subjects pyrotechnical. One thing most fireworks experts agree on — the birthplace of fireworks is China, about 15 centuries ago.

The most-commonly told tale says a Chinese cook mixed saltpeter (potassium nitrate), charcoal and sulfur and found the mixture burned brightly and rapidly. Then, by accident or design, he packed the potent powder in a hollow bamboo rod, threw it in a fire and found he had invented the explosive we now call black powder.

Why a cook? Saltpeter is very common in China — more common than common salt (sodium chloride) and just as useful as a flavor enhancer in cooking. An observant cook who spilled saltpeter on embers would notice small, bright flashes as the nitrate burned on the hot charcoal. Mixing saltpeter with charcoal and sulfur, the cook would have a mixture that would burn very brightly when thrown on a fire, particularly if the ingredients were thoroughly mixed.

Blasting bamboo
And why did the cook pack his new mixture into bamboo and toss it into a fire? Long before gunpowder was invented, the first fireworks in China were bursting bamboo. Bamboo grows so fast that pockets of air and sap get trapped inside of the plant, which expand and burst when heated. Throw green bamboo rods on a fire and they sizzle, blacken and burst. The resulting explosion served to scare away evil spirits and mark major occasions for several millennia until that unknown cook packed bamboo with black powder and blew his audience away (not literally we hope). Depending on the reaction of his audience, our mythical cook either got a big promotion or once he explained his recipe, he conveniently disappeared as a state security risk.

Some historians think a Chinese alchemist invented black powder and then fireworks. This conjecture also makes some sense because an alchemist would be likely to have a ready supply of sulfur and some reason to experiment with adding the yellow powder to his mixture.

Whether invented by cook or chemist, fireworks evolved from blasting bamboo to the predecessors of the paper firecrackers still used around the world today. As with so many things Asian, Marco Polo is given credit for bringing black powder and the secret of fireworks to the West. In this case, the famous Venetian’s travels occurred several decades after Roger Bacon, among others, developed black powder. Because science at the time was conducted and recorded in secret, it is a matter of debate whether the explosive mixture was an independent discovery or came from other Eastern sources.

From fireworks to firearms
By the time of Marco Polo’s travels, the Chinese developed and refined black powder to make great displays of fireworks and for use as weapons. Most notable among these weapons were Chinese arrows, rocket-propelled arrows often fire-tipped. Despite these advances, the Chinese did not invent the gun.

If the origins of black powder and fireworks are lost to history, the time and place where the gun was invented is very clear. The first gun was designed and built in Europe early in the 14th century by Berthold Schwarz, a Franciscan Monk living in Germany. He used the firework mixture in a metal tube closed at one end to propel a missile. Given the technology of the times, it took many years to get the right proportions of projectile size and weight, gun barrel strength and charge before the practical use of artillery was possible. But by the end of the 14th century, artillery added a new and deadly dimension to the invention of fireworks.

Two centuries later, in 1520, the Portuguese returned to China and introduced the invention of the gun to their hosts. The first time the Chinese saw guns were the cannons on the Portuguese ships firing salvos in Canton harbor.

See part two of this article to learn about fireworks from the 16th century forward!

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This article was originally published under the title "We're History" in the October 2004 edition of Chemical Engineering Progress magazine. This article was prepared by Neil Gussman, communications manager for the Chemical Heritage Foundation.