Gunpowder Development

Forum Lurker

Any TL with an early divergence tends to run across this subject sooner or later, but I'm having a hard time finding solid information about it. So, then, my questions to the general populace are:

A) In OTL, when and where can we reliably locate the development of gunpowder? Of rockets? Of firearms?

B) What factors led to these developments, and how can they be duplicated (or avoided) when dealing with an early divergence?
 

Cockroach

a) Various flamible concoction belived to be the ancestors of gunpowder can be traced to China in the 9th century AD, various record of early uses of rockets can be traced to China and to a lesser extent to the Arab world.
The first solid record of "gunpowder" is atributed to Roger Bacon in 1248 in England. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_powder

b) Sounds like the inital discovery was largely accidental.
 

Forum Lurker

A) I've seen figures quoted between the dates mentioned in Wikipedia and as much as a thousand years prior; I'd be really happy if I could find a secondary, rather than tertiary, source.

B) "Largely accidental" covers a whole lot of territory. For example, the discovery of radiation was a complete accident; it would still have been essentially impossible for it to have been discovered two hundred years prior, and highly unlikely for it to have taken more than fifty years longer than it did. The circumstances which allow something to be discovered (availability of product, ability to detect result, ability to determine first principles, etc.) are very important to most discoveries.
 
MrP

MrP

Banned
You remember your Star Trek! It's a mixture of sulphur, charcoal, and saltpetre (potassium nitrate). So anywhere with combustibles, sulphur and saltpetre, and you could theoretically do it. The known discovery is so vague that you could simply and justifiably do the same in an ATL.
 

Forum Lurker

Charcoal exists pretty much everywhere. Sulfur can apparently be found in pure deposits all over the place. Saltpetre can be refined from guano with pretty simple solubility measures. The question is why? What motivated someone in China to take these flammable, stain-causing, noxious-smelling powders and mix them?

Basically, what cultural practices will lead to the circumstances which allow someone to notice that this particular mixture burns surprisingly well?
 

Romulus Augustulus

Well, there was this sage guy who was looking for an immortality elixir, and people, in their search for immortality elixirs, have mixed up some pretty weird shit. Anyway, one day this guy happened to mix up a batch of weird shit that was highly flammable and/or explosive from charcoal, saltpeter and sulfur. Then, he heated it...and in his quest for an immortality elixir, discovered almost the exact opposite of what he was looking for.
 

wkwillis

I recently saw a 929 or so date in a tech magazine. Science News or some such.
Gunpowder means cannons means no fortresses, which means bigger countries. Gunpowder means cannons means sailboats beat galleys means voyages of exploration because your exploration voyages get back instead of sold into slavery by the people they discover.
 

Forum Lurker

Gunpowder doesn't necessarily mean cannon; rockets are a much more natural outgrowth of the tech, and given the early cannons' woeful inaccuracy and unfortunate tendency to explode, it's not inconceivable that a few centuries could go by with rockets being used as major weapons of war before someone convinces a monarch to invest in cannon. Likewise, cannon don't necessarily eliminate fortresses; sure, giant stone walls are pretty ineffective against a good cannon, but giant earthworks are pretty effective even into the twentieth century.

Romulus Augustus: do you happen to know on what particular tradition the fellow was drawing when he decided that funny powders were the path to immortality? I'd like to trace the origins of that idea, because it seems that it shouldn't be one that necessarily arises often.
 

Romulus Augustulus

I'm not sure on the specific details, as it's a vague account of what happened, but it's certainly possible that gunpowder was discovered by accident and was in fact the exact opposite of what was desired. Gunpowder makes a lousy immortality elixir...However, if the "im" is removed, it fits the bill perfectly.
 

Hendryk

Banned
As often in such a case one can reliably turn to Joseph Needham and his seminal multi-volume work Science and Civilization in China. Specifically, volume V.6, Military Technology: Missiles and Sieges and volume V.7, Military Technology: the Gunpowder Epic.
According to Needham, the earliest written reference to gunpowder is to be found in a book by Zeng Gongliang, The Collection of the Most Important Military Techniques, published in 1044, during the Song dynasty. The author details the ingredients and proportions for making gunpowder.
 

Romulus Augustulus

Yes...and no. The earliest references to gunpowder are warnings in alchemy textbooks of the fourth and third centuries BCE warning the reader not to mix sulfur, saltpeter and charcoal together in certain combinations, and especially not to heat such mixtures. Can't remember where I read that, though...
 

Forum Lurker

True; deposits aren't really the issue. It's a matter of who develops a reason to think of the deposits as anything other than noxious piles of potentially dangerous goop and when.
 
MrP

MrP

Banned
An Archimedes, a da Vinci? The sort of fella who comes up with the idea of using the sun's rays and mirrors to set the enemy battle fleet ablaze or the inventor of the tank would come up with something like gunpowder as a weapon.
 

DominusNovus

Forum Lurker said:
Romulus Augustus: do you happen to know on what particular tradition the fellow was drawing when he decided that funny powders were the path to immortality? I'd like to trace the origins of that idea, because it seems that it shouldn't be one that necessarily arises often.
Click to expand...
Its standard alchemy. The whole point of turning lead into gold wasn't to strike it rich, but to discover how to achieve perfection (read: immortality). The idea was that you could apply the same procedure to one item and achieve the same results with another item (more or less). For example, you take an imperfect metal (lead) and turn it into a perfect (or near perfect) metal (gold). You then apply the same process to an imperfect person (mortal) and turn them into a perfect person (immortal).

So, all real alchemist were only screwing around with lead and gold because it was a nice metaphor.
 

Hierophant

I would like to see a TL with either an ameridian civ or african civ developing gunpowder ala the Guns of Tawanitsyu(sp?).
 
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