TECHNOLOGY

The Invention of Gunpowder

~900 CE

History · Middle Ages · Holocene · Meghalayan

Black powder, a mixture of saltpetre, sulphur and charcoal, was developed around 900 by Chinese alchemists who were seeking preparations for immortality.

Black powder is a mixture of saltpetre, or potassium nitrate, sulphur and charcoal, developed by Chinese alchemists of the Tang period who were seeking preparations for immortality, and designated by them huoyao, the fire drug. Its property derives from the saltpetre, an oxygenated compound that releases its oxygen under heat, so that the charcoal and sulphur burn without any supply of external air: ordinary combustion is extinguished as soon as it is confined, this one continues, which permits the propulsion of a projectile in a closed tube. Chinese armies derive from it successively fire lances, bombs, rockets and, in the thirteenth century, guns; the Mongol wars diffuse the whole apparatus across Eurasia.

Why it matters

Artillery ends the effectiveness of medieval fortification and the military pre-eminence of mounted elites. States able to finance armament and to maintain troops trained in its use constitute themselves as centralised powers. As with printing, the technique is fully developed in China before its European version enters the textbooks as an invention.

Dating & uncertainty

The mixture is developed around the ninth century; the whole range of fundamental powder weapons, guns included, is developed in China before the Eurasian diffusion consequent on the Mongol wars of the thirteenth century. The reasons for the particular development of heavy artillery in Europe constitute a classic object of comparative history.

Our species’ history as one day

23:54:515 min 9 s before midnight

if the 315,000 years of Homo sapiens were compressed into a single day