Gunpowder
Pólvora
- Date
- c. 850 · confidence medium
- Place
- Tang-dynasty China (Taoist alchemists)
- Credited to
- Chinese Taoist alchemists
- Field
- Matter & energy
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A mixture of saltpetre, sulphur and charcoal discovered while searching for elixirs of immortality; the first written formula appears in the Wujing Zongyao (1044). The first chemical explosive in history.
A Taoist text of c. 850 warns of the danger of the mixture; some authors place the useful formula as late as the 10th century. It reached the Islamic world via the Mongols and Europe around 1260–1280.
What it led to
- a military revolution: the end of castles, state armies and the fiscal monopoly of war
- a chain of inventions: fire lance, rocket, bomb, cannon, arquebus
- transmission from China to the Islamic world (13th century) to Europe (1267, Roger Bacon)
Built on
- Sulfurc. 2000 BCE
- Greek firec. 672 CE
- Chinese alchemy
- Greek fire
Made possible
- Double-piston flamethrower919
- Fire lancec. 950 (imagen) / 1132 (uso)
- Iron bomb and hand grenade1221
- Gunpowder rocket1232
- Land mine1277
- Hasan al-Rammah's saltpetre purification and gunpowder devicesc. 1280
- Cannonc. 1288
- Korean gunpowder production and cannon (Hwatongdogam)1377
- Matchlock arquebusc. 1420
- Hwacha multiple rocket launcher1451
- Huygens and Papin gunpowder engine1673-1680
- Mysorean iron-cased rocketsc. 1780-1799
- Gunpowder rocket
- Iron bomb and hand grenade
- Cannon
- Land mine