Читать книгу Pyrotechnics. The History and Art of Firework Making онлайн

17 страница из 52

ssss1

Pyrotechnic compositions and gunpowder are inextricably mixed together in early European records; for our inquiries it will serve no useful purpose to disentangle them, the latter being only a particular case of the former. We will therefore deal with them together, taking the evidence of the knowledge of one as that of both, as until gunpowder is specifically mentioned as being used as a propellant in a gun or similar weapon, there is nothing to distinguish it from any other pyrotechnic composition.

The earliest record of European pyrotechny is in Claudius’ account of the public festivities during the consulate of Theodosius in the fourth century A.D., in which he describes fire “which ran about in different directions over the planks without burning or even charring them, and which formed by their twisting and turning globes of fire.”

Leo VI, Emperor of the East, in a work written about A.D. 900, says: “We have divers ways of destroying the enemies’ ships, as by means of fire prepared in tubes, from which they issue with a sound of thunder, and with a fiery smoke that burns the vessels on which they are hurled. A tube of tin must be put on the front of the ship to hurl this from.”