Gunpowder

Gunpowder, a mixture of saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal, was discovered in China by alchemists who were searching for elixirs and noticed that certain mixtures burned violently. Taoist texts of the ninth century warn against combining these substances. During the Song dynasty the Chinese used it in fire arrows, bombs and early rockets, and in the thirteenth century the knowledge reached the Islamic world and Europe, where Roger Bacon described a similar mixture. By the fourteenth century cannons were in use in European warfare, and they became powerful enough to batter down medieval castle walls, as in the Ottoman siege of Constantinople in 1453. Gunpowder transformed warfare and reshaped the power of states, and it also found peaceful uses in mining and fireworks.

Open on the timeline