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Earliest known written formula for gunpowder, from the Wujing Zongyao of 1044 AD.. Gunpowder is the first explosive to have been developed. Popularly listed as one of the "Four Great Inventions" of China, it was invented during the late Tang dynasty (9th century) while the earliest recorded chemical formula for gunpowder dates to the Song dynasty (11th century).
The earliest gunpowder recipe and primitive weaponry date to China's Song dynasty and the oldest extant guns appear in the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty of China. However, historian Tonio Andrade notes that there is a surprising scarcity of reliable evidence of firearms in Iran or Central Asia prior to the late 14th century.
This is a timeline of the history of gunpowder and related topics such as weapons, warfare, and industrial applications. The timeline covers the history of gunpowder from the first hints of its origin as a Taoist alchemical product in China until its replacement by smokeless powder in the late 19th century (from 1884 to the present day).
Blast furnace: Although cast iron tools and weapons have been found in China dating from the 5th century BC, the earliest discovered Chinese blast furnaces, which produced pig iron that could be remelted and refined as cast iron in the cupola furnace, date from the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, and the vast majority of early blast-furnace sites ...
Gunpowder was discovered in China sometime during the first millennium AD. [17] The very earliest possible reference to gunpowder appeared in 142 AD during the Eastern Han dynasty when the alchemist Wei Boyang wrote about a substance with the properties of gunpowder.
The two scientists discovered that saltpeter formed inside the walls of the caves of the doline, under certain conditions of humidity and temperature. [9] Prior to the discovery, nitraries were widespread all over the Kingdom of Naples. Manure was collected by the government and used to make saltpeter, which was a key ingredient for gunpowder ...
Gunpowder was invented in the 9th century by Chinese alchemists searching for an elixir of immortality. [19] By the time the Song dynasty treatise, Wujing Zongyao (武经总要), was written by Zeng Gongliang and Yang Weide in 1044, the various Chinese formulas for gunpowder held levels of nitrate in the range of 27% to 50%. [20]
Another early record of gunpowder, a Chinese book from c. 850 AD, indicates: [20] Some have heated together sulfur, realgar and saltpeter with honey; smoke and flames result, so that their hands and faces have been burnt, and even the whole house where they were working burned down.