Sentencias

CHAO HSUEH-MIN(1736-1796) ON BLACK POWDER TABOOS

The compounding must not be done in a family which is in mourning. It is especially prohibited in the house where a funeral has been held or where a man has died, for there the misfortune of accidental fire is certain to happen. In case the mourning is for someone outside of the immediate family, and in case the family wishes to buy powder and must use it, a piece of red silk-cloth may be hung in the compounding room to release (the family) from the prohibition of using powder. In a house where fireworks are being made, one must not burn ts'an sha or bamboo leaves lest by this means the essence of the saltpeter is weakened.

During the packing of powder, if a drum is beaten to strike power into the powder, the fire flowers will be brighter. However, during the compounding, the sound of a drum must not be heard lest the powder in consequence acquire the defect of bursting. The ashes on the charcoal must be removed before use. If a charcoal with adhering ashes is used, the resulting powder will usually be impeded. Probably the ashes are the ghosts of charcoal and the charcoal is afraid of them.

Women are not allowed to handle the powder. If the powder is packed by a woman, the crackers will change into fountains and vice versa. Smoking is forbidden in the powder room. The room should be kept quiet and neat, and noisy talk forbidden in order that the soul of the powder may be soothed. Care must be taken to prevent any changes in the powder. The testing of powder must not be carried out any place near the powder house. The filling of the cylinders must not be done near any fire or smoke.

The apparatus for handling the powder must be closed tightly, and the access of wind must be prevented. After long standing in the wind, the powder takes fire spontaneously. Artifices after being loaded with powder, must not be heated again (for drying), for there is danger that the powder may show its behavior spontaneously after long continued warming. The tamping or pounding of the powder must be neither too heavy nor too light, and the amount of the powder may not freely be increased or decreased. The packing of powder by lamplight is not permissible. The opening of the powder container on a rainy day is not permissible. Those who hold established formulas will be

limited by them; who understands elemental changes?

Davis, T. L. and Chao Yun-Ts'ung. Chao Hsuenh-Mine Outline of Pyrotechnics a Contribution to the History of Fireworks.

Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 75 (4) 95-107, May 1943.

JOSEPH NEEDHAM ON BLACK POWDER

Socially, the contrast with China is particularly noteworthy. While gunpowder blew up Western military aristocratic feudalism, the basic structure of China bureaucratic feudalism after five centuries or so of gunpowder weapons remained just about the same as it had been before the invention had taken place. The birth of chemical warfare had occurred, we may say, in the T'ang, [+ 644] but it did not find wide military use before the Wu Tai [+10th century] and the Sung, [13th century] and its real proving grounds were the wars between the Sung Empire, the Chin Tartars and the Mongols in the 12th and 13th centuries.

There are plenty of examples of its use by the forces of agrarian rebellions and it was employed at sea as well as on land, in seige warfare no less than in the field; but as there were no heavily armored knightly cavalry in China, nor any aristocratic or manorial feudal castles, the new weapon simply supplemented those which had been in use before, and produced no percep-tible effect upon the age-old civil and military bureaucratic apparatus, which each new foreign conqueror had to take over and use in his turn.

Needham, Joseph. Science in Traditional China: A Comparative Perspective. Chapter II - The Epic of Gunpowder and Firearms, Developing from Alchemy. Harvard University Press. 1981.

DAVID R. DILLEHAY ON BLACK POWDER -1978.

Subtle changes in raw materials or even in component parts can creep into the system and result in rejects or hazardous items.

Sometimes the tolerance on a parameter is at fault. Sometimes it is a change that is not even covered in the specification.

Designers and users both should be alert to changes in materials or components that can result from improvements in technology, cost-saving shortcuts by a vendor, environmental requirements (causing process modifications), or even changes in raw material sources. Many examples can be cited where only

one vendor's product can meet performance requirements although no discernible difference exists from raw material acceptance tests. These instances retard advancement of pyrotechnics to a science and foster the "black magic" image we would like to shed.

David Dillehay Signal Propellant Evaluation. Sixth International Pyrotechnics Seminar. 1978.

Donald J Haarmann

First published in the PGII Bulletin #55 March, 1987