Who's responsible for all this?

[SquirrelsaurusR]

A lot of people believe the Chinese invented gunpowder. Some people believe it originated in Europe. There are some scholars today that say some evidence points to the middle east. There are probably countless other theories.

Which part of the world do you think gunpowder originated in?

 

[CaptainBill03]

Good Morning
I saw a film on explosives last fall. It had a segment about a Chinese doctor trying to invent an elixir of life, in about 600 ad. He was heating a mixture of sulfur saltpeter and honey when it began burning violently and set fire to his hut. The scientists tried this them selves and rapidly made an impressive cloud of smoke.
Captain

 

[robinghewitt]

I think the Chinese invented the stuff that became gunpowder, but it needed someone else to get the proportions right, probably an Arab, wasn't me ::

 

[miqueleter]

What Robin said.

Look to Bert S. Hall for your latest and best guess. Both his own book and a forward to Partington's History of Greek Fire and Gunpowder offer probable answers.

 

[Wes/Tex]

Hey Cap., that'd be kind'a tough on that poor Chinese feller if he he took a bunch of that sulfur/saltpeter/honey on board and then had gas near the fire!! :haha: :crackup:

 

[SquirrelsaurusR]

...a Chinese doctor trying to invent an elixir of life, in about 600 a.d.

Is this guy known for certain in old documents, his name, birth date, etc? Or is it just a legend? If it's just an old story that doesn't appear with any specific information in any old manuscripts or records, then he might just be a Chinese Berthold Schwartz.

 

[Stumpkiller]

B. Schwartz was mid 1300's. China had been futzing around with it for a thousand years by then. "Redd" Chin, in 1,000 AD, was perhaps the first Chinese man to look into a container with his lit cigarette and discover a secondary use for blackpowder, which until then had only been an aphrodisiac. EVERYTHING is used a an aphrodisiac in China. His "ear cannon" never really caught on, but he still had a large impact . . . about 25 feet outside his workshop. It became very fashionable in Chinese society to have no eyebrows for many decades after that. A great philosopher, Fred Confucius, had written a sealed letter to the emperor in 400BC, warning of a possible future of great debate between the Forces of In-Line Shooters and the Forces of Good, and in 600AD the acting emperor opened the sealed letter which had been handed down a thousand years, and decreed that blackpowder could not be used in weapons to prevent this horror from transpiring. His words were "If they're just gonna us it for that, [censored] it." In the translation the word "with" somehow was inserted in the quote ahead of the final "it" and that's how blackpowder came to be used as an aphrodisiac. The Great Bedroom Fires which ravanged China for 600 years were the result of this seemingly simple misquote.

Europe had invented the fuse in 500AD, but until the introduction of gunpowder it was only used to lay a smoke screen for the large iron battering rams, called "cannin", that were in use at that time. Some soldier hid his aphodisiac (China Black) in a cannin and packed it in with a billiard ball so no one would notice it; and the rest is history.

Gunpowder is perhaps one of the best known inventions from China. It was developed during the latter part of the Han dynasty, or sometime in the early third century AD, but was generally not used for warfare until at least the eighth century. The Mongol invasion, which ended the Sung dynasty, featured the use of gunpowder-driven weapons against the Mongols, but to no avail. The Mongols quickly learned all of the Chinese tricks and used the technology against them.

NOVA: Tea and restaurants are certainly two important gifts the Song people gave to the world. What were some of the other Chinese inventions of this period that had a profound influence on the course of civilization?

Yates: Gunpowder completely transformed the way wars were waged and contributed to the eventual establishment of might over right. In my own research, I have been able to refute the common notion that the Chinese invented gunpowder but only used it for fireworks. I'm sure that they discovered military uses for it. I have found the earliest illustration of a cannon in the world, which dates from the change-over from the Northern Song to the Southern Song around 1127, which was 150 years before the development of the cannon in the West. The Song also used gunpowder to make fire lances - actually flame throwers - and many other gunpowder weapons, such as anti-personnel mines, which are thankfully now being taken out of general use.

Shucks, the Generals never did use land-mines. They make the sergeants make the privates use them.