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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and

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Speaker 1: today we're doing fireworks. Hey, Robert, did did you grow

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Speaker 1: up in a place where, whatever the actual law was,

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Speaker 1: you at least thought that fireworks were illegal and that

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Speaker 1: setting them off in your yard might summon the police. No.

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Speaker 1: I I grew up in places where it seemed that

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Speaker 1: fireworks were just part of life, and you could just

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Speaker 1: go out and play with a bunch of firecrackers in

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Speaker 1: the afternoon by yourself, and it wasn't any big deal,

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Speaker 1: you know, strap them to Joe there in um build

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Speaker 1: little volcanoes out of dirt and then blow them up

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Speaker 1: to get some scotch tape and see how many, um

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Speaker 1: what bottle rockets you could uh lash together and still

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Speaker 1: achieve some thing that would fly through the air, that

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Speaker 1: sort of thing. So definitely, when I was a little kid,

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Speaker 1: I had the impression that using fireworks was illegal. I

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Speaker 1: don't know if it was, but I think that's because

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Speaker 1: you couldn't buy them in the county where I lived.

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Speaker 1: So when Fourth of July or New Year's or whatever

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Speaker 1: was coming up and we wanted to get fireworks, we

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Speaker 1: had to go on a road trip up or down

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Speaker 1: the interstate to to one of the more lawless evil

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Speaker 1: counties where you could go to Big Daddy's Firecrackers, or

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Speaker 1: you know, one of these other places. I remember when

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Speaker 1: I was a kid one time buying a you know,

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Speaker 1: using my little allowance money to buy a firecracker that

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Speaker 1: was very exciting looking because it was shaped like a tank.

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Speaker 1: It was made of cardboard, and I thought, now, this

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Speaker 1: thing is going to be like a piece of mobile artillery.

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Speaker 1: It's going to roll around and shootout stuff. I recall

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Speaker 1: it didn't really do much, and it was one of

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Speaker 1: my earliest experiences of spending money on something expecting it

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Speaker 1: to be great and it being a total flop. I

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Speaker 1: remember being really impressed with the like the tanks and

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Speaker 1: the little sort of novelty items, because basically we when

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Speaker 1: Fourth of July or New Years would roll around, they'd

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Speaker 1: set up a ten er a couple of tenths in

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Speaker 1: town in the place where I grew up, and and

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Speaker 1: you know, they would sell the fireworks there. I always

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Speaker 1: wanted to get things like the tank, but generally a

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Speaker 1: parental or grown up unit that was present would would say, no, no, no,

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Speaker 1: that's that's a waste of money. You want something that

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Speaker 1: goes up in the air and blows up. My my

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Speaker 1: fondest memory I remember, I think my grandparents got this

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Speaker 1: one was one that went up, exploded and dropped tiny

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Speaker 1: parachute men out of it, like yeah, and that was

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Speaker 1: that was crazy. That was awesome because it's dropping something.

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Speaker 1: Then you then find that's not just total garbage. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's essentially garbage, but not total garbage. No, that's great

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Speaker 1: because then you strap a firecracker to that army man

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Speaker 1: and put it up. Yeah, I guess um. But then

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Speaker 1: I also remember being really impressed by the ones that

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Speaker 1: looked like actual rockets. The more rockety, the better, right,

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Speaker 1: And I distinctly remember sucking my my parents into getting

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Speaker 1: this this one rocket and then we we we brought

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Speaker 1: it home. And as it turned out, one of the

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Speaker 1: problems with this particular rocket is it's supposed to have

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Speaker 1: a launching rod, you know, like a rod that sticks

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Speaker 1: into the ground that ensures that it takes off in

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Speaker 1: a you know, a with a straight skyward trajectory. That

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Speaker 1: rod had been misplaced prior to purchase, so it did

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Speaker 1: not have one. So we set this thing off and

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Speaker 1: it instead of going straight up into the sky and exploding,

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Speaker 1: it went straight up and made a turn and then

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Speaker 1: went through a a a narrow gap in the sliding

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Speaker 1: glass door of our house, and it hit my uncle

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Speaker 1: in the face. Fortunately didn't like blow up in his

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Speaker 1: face or anything, but like, you know, kind of punctured

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Speaker 1: his cheek a little bit, and then like skidded around

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Speaker 1: on the carpeted floor shooting sparks everywhere. Uh So that

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Speaker 1: was exciting. Did you get to keep playing with fireworks

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Speaker 1: after that? Uh? Yeah, I guess it did inspire me

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Speaker 1: to be a little maybe I was a little more

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Speaker 1: careful after that, and I certainly to get into the

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Speaker 1: total recklessness of you know, people launching Roman candles at

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Speaker 1: each other, that sort of thing that you hear about.

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Speaker 1: I was generally it was about Yeah you hear about

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Speaker 1: or your horror stories about but or or that your

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Speaker 1: friends did in high school. Yeah, for me, it was

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Speaker 1: just firecrackers and in bottle rockets, so that you know,

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Speaker 1: low level uh and firework ammunition here, not getting into

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Speaker 1: like cherry bombs and so forth. I have personal stories

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Speaker 1: about firecracker use in high school that I'm just not

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Speaker 1: going to share on the podcast because I do not

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Speaker 1: want to inspire imitators and and have kids get body

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Speaker 1: parts blown off. Yeah, I have to say as a parent,

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Speaker 1: I certainly am far more protective when it comes to fireworks. Hey,

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Speaker 1: I'm not like super into them as an As a

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Speaker 1: grown up, um, I like watching professional fireworks every now

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Speaker 1: and then, But then again, I'm not going to really

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Speaker 1: go out of my way to see them. If they're around,

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Speaker 1: I will look up, you know. And I'm I'm more

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Speaker 1: protective of my son, like I don't. I don't really

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Speaker 1: like the idea of him even playing with fireworks to

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Speaker 1: the degree that I did growing up. Well, you know,

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Speaker 1: one safe alternative that has always puzzled me is one

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Speaker 1: of the most bizarre genres of home media that I've

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Speaker 1: ever seen. I recall seeing these, I think in the

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Speaker 1: gift shop area of a cracker barrel and DVD's of

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Speaker 1: fireworks displays. Oh man, I vaguely remember seeing because I

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Speaker 1: never watched one, that's for sure. Yeah I didn't either,

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Speaker 1: But I'm just wondering, what, So does somebody buy this

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Speaker 1: DVD and take it home and just put it on.

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Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, I just want to watch some fireworks

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Speaker 1: in the living room. I guess, you know. I mean,

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Speaker 1: is it that different from watching the Hearth on Netflix

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Speaker 1: every Christmas? I think it's somewhat different. I mean, neither

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Speaker 1: one's going to give off heat the way that it

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Speaker 1: would in reality. But you know, a real fireworks display,

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Speaker 1: you sort of feel the sound. There's this booming thing,

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Speaker 1: and and it's live, so you're usually experiencing it along

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Speaker 1: with many other people who are celebrating something. Just having

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Speaker 1: one on the TV. I don't know that I feel

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Speaker 1: like he get closer to the reality of a fire

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Speaker 1: burning in your fireplace with a fire on the TV. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: probably so, probably so. Uh then again, I do I

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Speaker 1: do know that they televise, or at least in the past,

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Speaker 1: they would televise some of these big fireworks shows and

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Speaker 1: and I remember I remember those being on TV when

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Speaker 1: I was a kid. Yeah, I guess so, so as

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Speaker 1: as everyone can guess, here we are talking about fireworks today.

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Speaker 1: This is going to be one of our Invention themed

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Speaker 1: episodes are an exploration of the origin of fireworks, which

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Speaker 1: is a fascinating story that I think a lot of

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Speaker 1: us probably know like the broad strokes of it. I

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Speaker 1: think a lot of people are probably at the very

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Speaker 1: least vaguely aware of the Chinese origins that we're going

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Speaker 1: to be discussing here, But even just the Chinese origins

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Speaker 1: of fireworks, it's it's just such a wonderful tale, full

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Speaker 1: of mystery and magic and and also goblins. And then likewise,

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Speaker 1: when we get into the European history of it as well,

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Speaker 1: there is a lot of magic and miss red there

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Speaker 1: as well. Totally, So we're not going to run through

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Speaker 1: the entire history of pyro technology here, but suffice to

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Speaker 1: say that the human ability to manipulate, sustain, control, and

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Speaker 1: produce fire is key to technological advancement as a whole.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's just difficult to overstate the importance of

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Speaker 1: fire mastery in human history. It's not just key, it's

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Speaker 1: the master key. It's the thing that unlocks almost everything else. Again,

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Speaker 1: there's a reason that broadly historical technological regimes are characterized

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Speaker 1: in terms of metal working, like what types of things

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Speaker 1: you could make tools out of, And you couldn't really

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Speaker 1: have metal working without fire, That's right. If you want

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Speaker 1: a more detailed breakdown of sort of like the basic

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Speaker 1: fire technology history of humanity. Check out our what was it?

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Speaker 1: A three part series we did on the match Stick

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Speaker 1: for Invention our our other show which has now been

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Speaker 1: folded back into this show, but all those episodes about

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Speaker 1: the match are still available for your listening. The fire

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Speaker 1: Extinguisher too. We talked to us, right, yeah, we kind

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Speaker 1: of can we continue? So it's ultimately more like a

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Speaker 1: six part journey through uh, some major moments in pyrotechnology.

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Speaker 1: I feel like this show is maybe against our wishes,

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Speaker 1: revealing some freudy and preoccupations going on in both of

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Speaker 1: our brains. But with explosive fireworks, we can't stop thinking

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Speaker 1: and talking about firecrackers, fire setting fire to stuff. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I guess so. Well. Also, we're coming up on July four,

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Speaker 1: and I think that was one of the main issues

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Speaker 1: here too, is we've been talking about doing a fireworks

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Speaker 1: episode forever and then finally um Work asked asked, us, hey,

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Speaker 1: do you have anything in the catalog that's July four themed?

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Speaker 1: And we're like, well, no, not really, but we've been

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Speaker 1: wanting to do fireworks, so here we are. So one

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Speaker 1: of the things that we touch on in those pyrotechnology

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Speaker 1: episodes is that in many ways, the camp fire itself,

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Speaker 1: the longstanding and important aspect of a human culture, is

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Speaker 1: in its off, an ancient laboratory, a place where humans

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Speaker 1: experimented with the addition of various fuels and substances to

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Speaker 1: learn what burns, what doesn't burn, and sometimes what burns

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Speaker 1: really well or what combusts. You know, I didn't think

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Speaker 1: of this until just now, but this is also bringing

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Speaker 1: to mind the recent episodes we did about buildings made

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Speaker 1: out of mammoth bone that we're found in what is

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Speaker 1: now Russia and Ukraine. But in this ancient Ice Age culture,

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Speaker 1: and a big part of that culture seemed to be

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Speaker 1: based around the burning of bones as fuel, something we

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Speaker 1: wouldn't even normally think of as possible. Yeah, exactly, Like

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Speaker 1: bones are one example of of a of a combustion

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Speaker 1: uhh source that that has played an important role in

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Speaker 1: human history. Another one, of course, is dung um. Some

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Speaker 1: some listeners of particularly some cultures, may not be aware

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Speaker 1: of just how important dung has been and still is

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Speaker 1: in many cases as a fuel. You know, you can

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Speaker 1: almost still feel the instinct in yourself, or at least

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Speaker 1: I can when ever, you are sitting around to fire

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Speaker 1: and you have some kind of novel item, there's almost

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Speaker 1: this primordial urge to just see what it's like if

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Speaker 1: you just throw that in the fire. What does it

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Speaker 1: look like when it burns? What does it do? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: I see that with my son especially, we recently were

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Speaker 1: putting up we were we had some tomato plants and

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Speaker 1: we're like, oh, let's get some sticks to brace these suckers,

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Speaker 1: and then we realized, oh, no, the last time we

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Speaker 1: had a fire in the backyard, the boy burned everything,

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Speaker 1: like every every piece of dry wood was consented. So, oh,

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Speaker 1: I sympathize. So it shouldn't come as any surprise then

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Speaker 1: that there there are, you know, various accounts of pre

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Speaker 1: fireworks substances and materials that would combust or burn in

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Speaker 1: a certain way that was notable. And one of the

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Speaker 1: really key examples here that is central to the origin

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Speaker 1: of fireworks is bamboo. Now bamboo, I think everyone's familiar

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Speaker 1: with bamboo, but it is a hollow hearted grass. It's

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Speaker 1: especially common in East Asia, but you'll find it throughout

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Speaker 1: the world's tropical regions. Now, I know many of you

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Speaker 1: have enjoyed this exact experiment. Uh, and if you haven't,

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Speaker 1: I suggest you try it the next time you have

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Speaker 1: a campfire, if it all possible. Dry bamboo can burn

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Speaker 1: quite readily, and in some cases the drying out process

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Speaker 1: causes those hollows in the bamboo to crack open, but

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Speaker 1: other times there remains a sealed pocket of air in there.

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Speaker 1: So if you throw the bamboo into the fire, the

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Speaker 1: heat will cause the air within that hollow to expand,

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Speaker 1: and it will expand enough that it pops and produces

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Speaker 1: a startling bang when it explodes. I've never done this personally,

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Speaker 1: but now I really want to. Yeah, it's it's tremendous fun.

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Speaker 1: I mean it. We can well imagine that this was

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Speaker 1: one of the key attractions. It's like we put this

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Speaker 1: into the fire and it's it's it's alarming, it's entertaining,

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Speaker 1: it's uh, you know, it's it's raising your your awareness. Uh.

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Speaker 1: It's something that I think, you know, we can when

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Speaker 1: we experience it. We're experiencing the the primal experience of

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Speaker 1: burning bamboo as well. Now, this property of bamboo is

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Speaker 1: something that has been recognized since ancient times. Yes, absolutely, Um,

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Speaker 1: you know. It also brings to mind another interesting idea

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Speaker 1: that we recently discussed in our Phartonomicon episodes um Mary

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Speaker 1: Roach and her her book what was it? Uh gulp.

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Speaker 1: I believe she has his conversation with the University of

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Speaker 1: Alabama's Stephen Secor about snakes, and he has this theory

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Speaker 1: that uh hypothesis, rather that perhaps the myth of fire

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Speaker 1: breathing dragons has some origin in dead constrictor snakes bloated

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Speaker 1: with prey bring being brought to the fireside, and then

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Speaker 1: a post mortem exhalation of stomach gases ignites the flames,

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Speaker 1: that makes the flames roar up um, which you know,

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Speaker 1: I don't know if there's a whole lot of evidence

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Speaker 1: for that, but it was an interesting idea. Yeah, highly speculative,

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Speaker 1: but I like it. Yeah, And it gets again, it

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Speaker 1: kind of touches in the same area that we're touching

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Speaker 1: on here with bamboo. Uh, the idea that this inevitable

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Speaker 1: and use meant to be had in burning it in

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Speaker 1: the fire, So it would it would seem impossible to

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Speaker 1: truly date how far back this practice goes of observing

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Speaker 1: that bamboo pops in the fire. But given the necessary components,

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Speaker 1: you know, and the obvious lack of archaeological evidence. We

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Speaker 1: have to consider that it goes like pretty much all

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Speaker 1: the way back in uh, as far as there have

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Speaker 1: been peoples around bamboo that are capable of producing fire,

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Speaker 1: and in Chinese history, we at least can consider it

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Speaker 1: as long as we've had Chinese writing and uh, and

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Speaker 1: that is where we see some some you know, early

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Speaker 1: evidence that this was an established thing. So I was

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Speaker 1: reading some writings by um hiwang Yuan of Western Kentucky

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Speaker 1: University where he's a professor of Library science, but he's

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Speaker 1: also a guest professor of the Foreign Languages College at

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Speaker 1: Nankai University in China, and he's written several books on

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Speaker 1: Chinese proverbs and legends. In two thousand eight, he wrote

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Speaker 1: a piece on Chinese fireworks, and he points out, uh

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Speaker 1: that what we're talking about here is bao jou, which

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Speaker 1: is bloating bamboo, like that's the word for it, and

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Speaker 1: it later becomes used for fireworks. And he points to

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Speaker 1: a few early mentions of of this sort of thing.

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Speaker 1: He points to the Song Dynasty writer Woang and Anshi

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Speaker 1: who lived ten twenty one through six, who wrote a

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Speaker 1: poem in which one of the lines translates as follows

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Speaker 1: quote admits the crackling of exploding bamboo, a year is

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Speaker 1: gone in the warmth of a spring breeze, we drink

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Speaker 1: the wine of suzu. Now, to me, that's availing itself

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Speaker 1: of multiple interpretations. When the year is gone amidst the

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Speaker 1: crackling of bamboo. Is that because crackling bamboo is meant

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Speaker 1: to signal the turning of the new year? Or is

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Speaker 1: it that a year is gone in a flash as

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Speaker 1: as fast as as bamboo cracks. Yeah, it's nice. There's

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Speaker 1: some wonderful poetry to it that certainly it does seem

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Speaker 1: to be describing, uh, you know, whatever it's getting alluding to,

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Speaker 1: you know, metaphorically. It is also alluding to the Chinese

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Speaker 1: custom that the New Year spring festival celebration of burning

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Speaker 1: bamboo to create loud, startling noises as a part of celebrations.

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Speaker 1: This was actually making me wonder about the linguistic conceptual

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Speaker 1: history of exploding or the idea of an explosion. Before

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Speaker 1: a culture had combustible chemicals like say, black powder, would

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Speaker 1: the culture have had a concept or a word that

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Speaker 1: means exactly what explode means to us today. I'm trying

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Speaker 1: to think what other chances to observe natural explosions would

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Speaker 1: have been obviously, bamboo seems like a good one. But

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Speaker 1: what beyond that? You can think of volcanic eruptions, But

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Speaker 1: that wouldn't be something that people observed often enough you

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Speaker 1: would think that to have its own dedicated word for it. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And it seems to me like many early writings about

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Speaker 1: chemical combustion actually use words related to other, much more

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Speaker 1: common natural phenomenon that aren't exactly explosions, things like thunder

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Speaker 1: and lightning. Yeah, because I guess my mind does instantly

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Speaker 1: go to things that are more I guess a bursting

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Speaker 1: or rupturing. For instance, um, the popping of a of

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Speaker 1: of of a pimple or or a blister or or

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Speaker 1: some sort of you know, skin ailment, or the bursting

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Speaker 1: of say a blood filled kick, that sort of thing.

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Speaker 1: But those are again, it's more of a bursting or

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Speaker 1: a rupturing, and I would you know, we wouldn't necessarily

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Speaker 1: compare it to an exploding. Likewise, if you were doing

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Speaker 1: something with, say, bladders of animals that have been inflated

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Speaker 1: with air or water, and then you're bursting them in

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Speaker 1: some fashion, it's still probably a different thing than just explosion.

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Speaker 1: I can imagine that with a bladder, because it seems

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Speaker 1: like the important phenomena are the ones of like suddenly

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Speaker 1: relieving large amounts of pressure with a sound or some

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Speaker 1: kind of some kind of like tactile blasts that you

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Speaker 1: can feel. Yeah, and you're just not going to get

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Speaker 1: that with a with with a blood filled tick or

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Speaker 1: the pimple. I mean, if you could, that'd be pretty impressive. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean it's kind of a mental popping sound, but

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Speaker 1: it's not really an audible sound. It's just more of

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Speaker 1: an experience. Um And then again, we're probably to what

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Speaker 1: extent or were we thinking about explosions when we engage,

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Speaker 1: and you know, it's like the the the the idea

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Speaker 1: of the explosion then informs how we're thinking about rupturing

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Speaker 1: and bursting. So um I mentioned there was another um

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Speaker 1: uh bit of poetry here that Yawn refers to. He

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Speaker 1: refers to writings in the Book of Songs, one of

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Speaker 1: the five classics of of Chinese poetry, said to be

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Speaker 1: compiled by Confusus himself, and this is from the late

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Speaker 1: Western Joe dynasty, which would be ten s b c

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Speaker 1: E through seven seventy one b c E and it

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Speaker 1: translates as follows, how goes the night. It's not yet midnight,

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Speaker 1: but the ting lao is already blazing. So king lao

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Speaker 1: apparently refers to a kind of torch made of bamboo,

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Speaker 1: and as it burns, it makes these crackling, perhaps popping noises.

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Speaker 1: So it's an upgrade eating of the bamboo popping effect

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Speaker 1: into a different sort of pyrotechnic device, not just desultory

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Speaker 1: poking into the fire with a piece of bamboo such

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Speaker 1: that it pops, but making a torch that is designed

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Speaker 1: to pop as it burns. Yes, that's that's my understanding

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Speaker 1: of it. Yes, it's easy to simply extrapolate our modern

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Speaker 1: enjoyment of such pops and bangs to ancient people's. And

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Speaker 1: I do think it's perfectly fair to assume this is

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Speaker 1: a large part of it. You know, like a startling

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Speaker 1: sound is amusing, and uh, you know, you start, you're

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Speaker 1: scared for a second, and then you're relieved and you're

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Speaker 1: laughing like that's I think that's just part of the

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Speaker 1: universal human experience, and it's been that way for for

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Speaker 1: a very long time. Yeah, I'm reminded of the psychological

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Speaker 1: attraction people have to popping bubble wrap? Why do people

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Speaker 1: like doing that so much? I think we hypothesized in

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Speaker 1: a previous episode of Invention that it might have something

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Speaker 1: to do with grooming instincts maybe, but back to pimple

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Speaker 1: popping and tick bursting, right exactly. But I think part

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Speaker 1: of it also, especially when you see children do it,

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Speaker 1: it seems a little it less like anxiety relieving grooming

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Speaker 1: behaviors with them and and more like a game of

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Speaker 1: Jack in the Box or Pop Goes the Weasel or

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Speaker 1: Peek a Boo or something. It's just repeatedly startling yourself

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Speaker 1: with the sound and enjoying it absolutely. And so I

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Speaker 1: think it again, it's perfectly fair to say this is

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Speaker 1: a large part of what we're talking about here. But

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Speaker 1: another part of the tradition is the use of loud

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Speaker 1: noises to frighten away uh spirits or monsters. Uh. The

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Speaker 1: more recent version of this is the idea of frightening

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Speaker 1: away the New Year's beast, the nun Shao. Now there's

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Speaker 1: some discussion about whether this is actually you know, how

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Speaker 1: how old this tradition goes back. There's some that say

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Speaker 1: that it's essentially a recent tradition that's popped up, and

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Speaker 1: this gets into you know, some of the the Chinese

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Speaker 1: New Year celebrations that most of us are familiar with seeing,

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Speaker 1: you know, the idea of like a lion dance taking

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Speaker 1: place and firecrackers going off, that sort of thing. But

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Speaker 1: it also correlates to an ancient tradition that Juand discusses,

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Speaker 1: the shan Zhao. According to the Han dynasty classic the

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Speaker 1: Book of Gods and Spirits, these strange creatures would harass

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Speaker 1: camp fires in the night, and they were also said

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Speaker 1: in some traditions to carry a disease that could cause

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Speaker 1: chills and fevers. So what you did is you use

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Speaker 1: bamboo firewood, because that would of course pop at regular

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Speaker 1: intervals and create these frightening noises that would keep these monsters, spirits, creatures,

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Speaker 1: whatever you want to call them, away from your fire.

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Speaker 1: So it is not just amusing to have exploding bamboo around,

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Speaker 1: but it's also somewhere between a real repellent of maybe

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Speaker 1: some kind of creature that would threaten your campfire, or

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Speaker 1: at least imagined as some kind of apotropaic magic to

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Speaker 1: keep the demons away. Yeah, exactly so. So obviously, quite unexpectedly,

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Speaker 1: goblins were popping up in the research, so I decided

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Speaker 1: to look a little deeper. Um. And one of one

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Speaker 1: of the sources we came across as a book by

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Speaker 1: Richard von blonde idled The Sinister Way, the Divine and

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Speaker 1: the Demonic and Chinese religious culture, and in it uh

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Speaker 1: he says that shan zhao has sometimes translated as mountain

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Speaker 1: goblins uh and described as being ape like in various ways. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And he says that basically these are quote a class

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Speaker 1: of petty demons, change link spirits inhabiting the wild mountains

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Speaker 1: and forests. Yeah. Overall he seems to characterize them as

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Speaker 1: a kind of a very classic type of monster. Actually,

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Speaker 1: the monster that in that embodies the chaos of the

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Speaker 1: wilderness as opposed to the order of civilization. Yeah. And

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Speaker 1: of course you see this in European traditions. You see

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Speaker 1: this uh in cultures around the world. Right. I mean

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Speaker 1: that the dark is frightening, the wilds are frightening, especially

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Speaker 1: if they're not your wilds. And that's something that he

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Speaker 1: points out of Von Glan points out that after the

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Speaker 1: loss of Northern China to foreign conquerors in three seventeen,

399
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Speaker 1: the Chinese rulers were displaced to the south where they

400
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Speaker 1: encounter or a dense, humid subtropical environment along with rugged mountains,

401
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Speaker 1: along with new wildlife and native people's. So he says

402
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Speaker 1: that this was to to the rulers of that have

403
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Speaker 1: that had come down from northern China, this was a

404
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Speaker 1: place of barbaric peoples, of savage spirits and uh. And

405
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Speaker 1: thus you see that it may be strengthening predispositions for

406
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Speaker 1: this sort of folkloric motif. Though then again, I wonder

407
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Speaker 1: how much, um, the idea of like mountain goblins that

408
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Speaker 1: are considered somewhat humanoids, somewhat ape like, might have been

409
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Speaker 1: inspired by encounters with actual wildlife like I know, of course,

410
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Speaker 1: gibbons traditionally occupied much of ancient China and there and

411
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Speaker 1: there's a lot of consciousness of gibbons in Chinese culture

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Speaker 1: and poetry. Yeah, absolutely, um And and apparently some some

413
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Speaker 1: reads on the shengs Au certainly point towards, you know,

414
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Speaker 1: actual apes as being at least part of it, you know,

415
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Speaker 1: because indeed, what do we know about out a lot

416
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Speaker 1: of monkeys species in the monkeys, especially in the wild,

417
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Speaker 1: is that they can be curious, they can be um,

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Speaker 1: they can be some a manner of a pest when

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Speaker 1: they encounter human activities, and uh, you know, I don't

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Speaker 1: know how much we should read into the idea of

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Speaker 1: of illness being caused by them, because you see this

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Speaker 1: a lot with mythical creatures, right and and mythical and

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Speaker 1: magical beings and magical people's they cause disease their way

424
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Speaker 1: of explaining illness in a pre germ theory world. But

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Speaker 1: at the same time, you know, obviously one can transmit

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Speaker 1: illnesses from uh, wild animals, so that could potentially be

427
00:23:34,600 --> 00:23:37,159
Speaker 1: a part of it. I guess. Uh. However, you do

428
00:23:37,240 --> 00:23:41,080
Speaker 1: see folks that go in an entirely cryptid direction with

429
00:23:41,119 --> 00:23:42,560
Speaker 1: all of this, and they're like, oh, well, this is

430
00:23:42,640 --> 00:23:46,560
Speaker 1: clearly uh you know, we're clearly talking about sasquatches. Here.

431
00:23:46,800 --> 00:23:48,880
Speaker 1: Was there an X Files episode about the chan Zio

432
00:23:49,480 --> 00:23:51,399
Speaker 1: I don't know. You're the one to tell me about

433
00:23:51,440 --> 00:23:53,879
Speaker 1: the whether there's an X Files episode or not. I

434
00:23:53,880 --> 00:23:57,680
Speaker 1: don't remember one. But you know, they they turned through

435
00:23:57,720 --> 00:23:59,760
Speaker 1: a lot of cryptids over the course of that show.

436
00:23:59,800 --> 00:24:01,720
Speaker 1: That's a lot of seasons to fill. At some point

437
00:24:01,800 --> 00:24:04,639
Speaker 1: they were even doing the Jersey Devil, so you know,

438
00:24:04,920 --> 00:24:07,560
Speaker 1: they were really really rooting around in the bottom of

439
00:24:07,560 --> 00:24:10,119
Speaker 1: the bucket. But but that does also point to you know,

440
00:24:10,160 --> 00:24:12,399
Speaker 1: you can point to plenty of other cultures that have

441
00:24:12,520 --> 00:24:15,480
Speaker 1: some sort of a wild man of the woods kind

442
00:24:15,520 --> 00:24:19,679
Speaker 1: of uh creature or multiple creatures in their mythology like

443
00:24:20,080 --> 00:24:22,560
Speaker 1: uh into a certain extent, a number of these could

444
00:24:22,600 --> 00:24:28,240
Speaker 1: be inspired by observances of ape creatures in the wild. Yeah, sure,

445
00:24:28,240 --> 00:24:29,879
Speaker 1: I mean that That's always one of the great mysteries

446
00:24:29,880 --> 00:24:33,200
Speaker 1: when you're dealing with mythical beasts is like what percent

447
00:24:33,240 --> 00:24:36,480
Speaker 1: of it is imagination and what percent is inspired by

448
00:24:36,520 --> 00:24:39,119
Speaker 1: something people saw, either like you know, seeing a person

449
00:24:39,200 --> 00:24:42,960
Speaker 1: and misunderstanding what you saw, or seeing some seeing wildlife

450
00:24:42,960 --> 00:24:46,800
Speaker 1: and misunderstanding. Yeah. Now, now von Glen points out that

451
00:24:47,440 --> 00:24:50,320
Speaker 1: there are other things that were sort of classified as

452
00:24:50,760 --> 00:24:53,320
Speaker 1: as also being shan zhao in essence. One of them

453
00:24:53,400 --> 00:24:56,199
Speaker 1: was this, uh, these entities called the Wutong Shin that

454
00:24:56,280 --> 00:24:57,960
Speaker 1: I think we talked about in the past and the

455
00:24:57,960 --> 00:25:00,760
Speaker 1: show because there in some ways in some versions of

456
00:25:00,800 --> 00:25:06,840
Speaker 1: them are comparable to incubi, demons and European traditions. But

457
00:25:06,840 --> 00:25:10,200
Speaker 1: but these are as you often see with with mythical

458
00:25:10,280 --> 00:25:13,680
Speaker 1: creatures and beings and um in cultures. The wutong Shan

459
00:25:13,840 --> 00:25:16,720
Speaker 1: end up like changing over time and become being more

460
00:25:16,800 --> 00:25:20,200
Speaker 1: like gods and being something that should be revered, whereas

461
00:25:20,680 --> 00:25:24,400
Speaker 1: Uh von Glen points out that the the Chanzhao goblins

462
00:25:24,560 --> 00:25:29,399
Speaker 1: just remain untransformed in cultural traditions. They remain these pesky

463
00:25:29,520 --> 00:25:33,439
Speaker 1: goblins of the wild. And one issue that I found

464
00:25:33,560 --> 00:25:36,120
Speaker 1: rather interesting here that I don't really have a firm

465
00:25:36,160 --> 00:25:39,439
Speaker 1: answer on is is why in some cases, like a

466
00:25:39,480 --> 00:25:42,560
Speaker 1: number of cases, they're described as ape like, but sometimes

467
00:25:42,560 --> 00:25:45,720
Speaker 1: they have inverted feet and then perhaps in some cases

468
00:25:45,760 --> 00:25:48,520
Speaker 1: a single leg. And that made me think of these

469
00:25:48,520 --> 00:25:52,560
Speaker 1: other cases of mono peds which are described in various traditions,

470
00:25:52,560 --> 00:25:55,359
Speaker 1: including by plenty of the elder uh the notion of

471
00:25:55,480 --> 00:25:59,800
Speaker 1: one legged wood spirits uh, that that one might encounter

472
00:25:59,880 --> 00:26:03,520
Speaker 1: in the wild. Again entirely speculative here, but I'm I

473
00:26:03,600 --> 00:26:07,320
Speaker 1: just wonder if that kind of concept could be inspired

474
00:26:07,359 --> 00:26:10,800
Speaker 1: by seeing the different locomotion of apes like gibbons who

475
00:26:10,840 --> 00:26:13,600
Speaker 1: walk or climb or hang with the aid of very

476
00:26:13,720 --> 00:26:17,359
Speaker 1: long arms. Yeah, or kind of like a a side

477
00:26:17,359 --> 00:26:20,119
Speaker 1: profile kind of issue where you're just looking at them

478
00:26:20,119 --> 00:26:21,840
Speaker 1: from the side and they they're like, oh, they're kind

479
00:26:21,880 --> 00:26:24,680
Speaker 1: of moving like a human might move if they had

480
00:26:24,720 --> 00:26:28,320
Speaker 1: one leg and a pair of crutches, that sort of thing. Um,

481
00:26:28,359 --> 00:26:32,159
Speaker 1: So you know that's always a possibility one of the uh.

482
00:26:32,600 --> 00:26:34,360
Speaker 1: And then also you could also throw in, well, it's

483
00:26:34,359 --> 00:26:37,760
Speaker 1: a minimally counterintuitive creature design, right, what I have not

484
00:26:37,880 --> 00:26:41,040
Speaker 1: two legs but one. Likewise, you could compare it to

485
00:26:41,119 --> 00:26:46,280
Speaker 1: congenital deformities in human beings. But but one interesting hypothesis

486
00:26:46,320 --> 00:26:49,720
Speaker 1: that I ran across was from the scholar carl A.

487
00:26:49,840 --> 00:26:53,200
Speaker 1: P Ruck, who proposed that at least some of these

488
00:26:53,280 --> 00:26:58,680
Speaker 1: might be connected to Vadic traditions involving soma um, which

489
00:26:58,680 --> 00:27:02,120
Speaker 1: of course is some soma. Was this essentially some sort

490
00:27:02,160 --> 00:27:04,879
Speaker 1: of drug that is described in ancient texts, and the

491
00:27:04,920 --> 00:27:08,320
Speaker 1: actual botanical reality of soma remains something of a mystery,

492
00:27:08,520 --> 00:27:13,520
Speaker 1: with explanations ranging from psilocybin to something like a fedra. Okay.

493
00:27:14,400 --> 00:27:19,879
Speaker 1: But but Ruck's proposition here is that this idea of

494
00:27:19,880 --> 00:27:23,040
Speaker 1: a one armed being in the woods is essentially tied

495
00:27:23,080 --> 00:27:26,920
Speaker 1: to a botanical description. Specifically, he wrote about shade Foot's,

496
00:27:27,600 --> 00:27:30,160
Speaker 1: a fabulous tribe from India who were thought to jump

497
00:27:30,200 --> 00:27:32,960
Speaker 1: about on a single foot that could be used as

498
00:27:32,960 --> 00:27:36,840
Speaker 1: a paracel uh and apparently the idea is that what

499
00:27:36,920 --> 00:27:40,520
Speaker 1: if this is uh, you know, it's an exaggerated um

500
00:27:40,640 --> 00:27:44,760
Speaker 1: uh anthropomorphic description of a plant that you would encounter

501
00:27:45,080 --> 00:27:47,520
Speaker 1: in the wild. I don't know, I don't have a

502
00:27:47,520 --> 00:27:50,800
Speaker 1: firm answer. What's an interesting idea. I'm trying to picture

503
00:27:50,800 --> 00:27:54,639
Speaker 1: it a plant that that could metaphorically be described as

504
00:27:54,640 --> 00:27:57,240
Speaker 1: a person with one foot who can also use their

505
00:27:57,280 --> 00:28:00,359
Speaker 1: foot as a parasol. I guess. I mean, so my

506
00:28:00,600 --> 00:28:05,240
Speaker 1: family recently went mushroom foraging and and also just sort

507
00:28:05,240 --> 00:28:07,440
Speaker 1: of identifying mushrooms, and you know, we have a number

508
00:28:07,480 --> 00:28:09,000
Speaker 1: of them. We have. The Old Man in the Woods

509
00:28:09,080 --> 00:28:10,639
Speaker 1: is one of The Old Man of the Woods is

510
00:28:10,680 --> 00:28:13,199
Speaker 1: one of the mushrooms you encounter, you know, the the

511
00:28:13,280 --> 00:28:15,560
Speaker 1: chicken or hen of the woods is another. So there's

512
00:28:15,560 --> 00:28:16,879
Speaker 1: a lot of the sort of thing that goes on

513
00:28:16,960 --> 00:28:20,719
Speaker 1: with the the naming of and certainly the non scientific

514
00:28:20,840 --> 00:28:24,600
Speaker 1: naming of various um organisms in the wild. So, you know,

515
00:28:24,760 --> 00:28:27,159
Speaker 1: it seems totally possible, even though I don't know that

516
00:28:27,160 --> 00:28:29,960
Speaker 1: there's actually any any evidence for it. Uh. If it's

517
00:28:30,080 --> 00:28:32,919
Speaker 1: it may just be pure speculation, but it's something to

518
00:28:32,920 --> 00:28:38,000
Speaker 1: think about. As for von Glann himself, he ultimately summarizes

519
00:28:38,120 --> 00:28:40,920
Speaker 1: that that he thinks, quote, it seems likely that these

520
00:28:40,960 --> 00:28:45,200
Speaker 1: demonic images derived from frightening encounters with denizens of the mountains,

521
00:28:45,320 --> 00:28:48,080
Speaker 1: both human and ape. Okay, so it might be just

522
00:28:48,200 --> 00:28:51,600
Speaker 1: sort of conflating of stories of people encountering gibbons, people

523
00:28:51,680 --> 00:28:55,240
Speaker 1: encountering other people they weren't familiar with, and it turns

524
00:28:55,280 --> 00:28:59,440
Speaker 1: into monster stories, but ultimately leads to this consciousness of

525
00:28:59,480 --> 00:29:02,440
Speaker 1: a thing can do to repel the monsters of the wild,

526
00:29:02,480 --> 00:29:05,280
Speaker 1: the monsters of the mountains, is that you can have

527
00:29:05,480 --> 00:29:10,040
Speaker 1: a bamboo torch that explodes and frightens and drives them off. Yeah,

528
00:29:10,080 --> 00:29:11,800
Speaker 1: you know, you may and and it's one of those

529
00:29:11,800 --> 00:29:13,560
Speaker 1: things which it makes sense if you're dealing with an

530
00:29:13,560 --> 00:29:17,160
Speaker 1: actual um frightening animal or you know, in the wild

531
00:29:17,200 --> 00:29:19,680
Speaker 1: makes the loud noises scared away. But also it's something

532
00:29:19,720 --> 00:29:23,120
Speaker 1: you can do against even ideas of darkness, right, more

533
00:29:23,680 --> 00:29:28,400
Speaker 1: supernatural premises about about the nature of reality. You know,

534
00:29:28,560 --> 00:29:30,200
Speaker 1: I am frightened, but hey, I can make a loud

535
00:29:30,240 --> 00:29:33,680
Speaker 1: noise and uh, and that's gonna that's at least something

536
00:29:34,200 --> 00:29:37,360
Speaker 1: there's something actually very instinctual. I think about the idea

537
00:29:37,360 --> 00:29:40,920
Speaker 1: of making noise when you are frightened, especially in the

538
00:29:41,000 --> 00:29:43,480
Speaker 1: dark or in the wild. You know, there's the old

539
00:29:43,480 --> 00:29:48,840
Speaker 1: expression whistling, whistling past the graveyard, um or you'll just

540
00:29:48,880 --> 00:29:51,320
Speaker 1: notice it in people when they start getting scared walking

541
00:29:51,320 --> 00:29:54,760
Speaker 1: around in a place, like kids sometimes maybe start talking louder,

542
00:29:55,400 --> 00:29:58,800
Speaker 1: or start talking to themselves, or snapping their fingers or

543
00:29:58,800 --> 00:30:02,080
Speaker 1: whistling or humming. We've got this natural sense that making

544
00:30:02,160 --> 00:30:06,800
Speaker 1: noises provide security. Yeah. I remember thinking this while watching

545
00:30:07,120 --> 00:30:10,320
Speaker 1: Um the movie Yet, the recent adaptation of Suphan King's

546
00:30:10,360 --> 00:30:13,760
Speaker 1: Yet you know, where these children are encountering this horrifying

547
00:30:14,080 --> 00:30:16,680
Speaker 1: supernatural entity, And it just kept thinking, like, oh, man,

548
00:30:16,720 --> 00:30:19,680
Speaker 1: if I encountered Pennywise the clown, I would just yell

549
00:30:19,720 --> 00:30:21,320
Speaker 1: at him. I would just yell at him. He wouldn't

550
00:30:21,320 --> 00:30:23,160
Speaker 1: even know what to do, you know, like that, like

551
00:30:23,200 --> 00:30:27,040
Speaker 1: that's one way you can diffuse the supernatural adversary of fear.

552
00:30:27,400 --> 00:30:30,320
Speaker 1: He didn't expect you to go on the offensive and

553
00:30:30,120 --> 00:30:33,760
Speaker 1: and and shout things at him. So yeah, maybe it's

554
00:30:33,800 --> 00:30:36,520
Speaker 1: connected to that. I don't know. Should we take a

555
00:30:36,560 --> 00:30:38,760
Speaker 1: break and then come back to talk more about the

556
00:30:38,760 --> 00:30:41,280
Speaker 1: invention of fireworks? Yes, we'll take a quick break for

557
00:30:41,320 --> 00:30:43,800
Speaker 1: the ad goblins, and then we'll be back with more content.

558
00:30:45,720 --> 00:30:50,240
Speaker 1: Thank Okay, we heard from the ad goblins, but we

559
00:30:50,240 --> 00:30:53,120
Speaker 1: we we use some popping devices to drive them away.

560
00:30:53,160 --> 00:30:55,640
Speaker 1: And now we're back into the history of proto fireworks

561
00:30:55,640 --> 00:30:59,240
Speaker 1: at least. Yeah. So, yeah, we've talked about proto fireworks,

562
00:30:59,240 --> 00:31:01,800
Speaker 1: but where to act shool fireworks into the picture. Things

563
00:31:01,800 --> 00:31:03,960
Speaker 1: that we can that we would actually look at, say

564
00:31:03,960 --> 00:31:06,120
Speaker 1: on a table and say, oh, look at that. That's

565
00:31:06,160 --> 00:31:10,080
Speaker 1: that's a firework, that's a firecracker, etcetera. So basically the

566
00:31:10,120 --> 00:31:14,280
Speaker 1: ideas that the Chinese simply augmented their fire and noisemaker

567
00:31:14,360 --> 00:31:20,560
Speaker 1: practices with chemically volatile substances. Once those substances were discovered. So,

568
00:31:20,600 --> 00:31:23,640
Speaker 1: as we discussed in our our Mash episodes, sulfur tipped

569
00:31:23,640 --> 00:31:26,360
Speaker 1: matches were already in use in China by the sixth

570
00:31:26,360 --> 00:31:31,840
Speaker 1: century CE. But the key to fireworks is, of course, uh,

571
00:31:31,840 --> 00:31:35,960
Speaker 1: this special array of chemicals that come together to to

572
00:31:35,960 --> 00:31:39,320
Speaker 1: to make gunpowder. Uh. There's of course saltpeter, which is

573
00:31:39,320 --> 00:31:43,520
Speaker 1: potassium nitrate, which was already being stuffed into bamboo during

574
00:31:43,560 --> 00:31:47,640
Speaker 1: the Southern Song period of twelve seventy nine in order

575
00:31:47,640 --> 00:31:51,080
Speaker 1: to create a more impressive bang with the bamboo and

576
00:31:51,200 --> 00:31:54,200
Speaker 1: between these two periods, potassium nitrate is said to have

577
00:31:54,280 --> 00:31:58,080
Speaker 1: emerged from the realm of Chinese alchemy. Yeah, so maybe

578
00:31:58,120 --> 00:31:59,640
Speaker 1: we should stop for a second to look at the

579
00:31:59,720 --> 00:32:02,840
Speaker 1: chemical properties of potassium nitrate and understand the role it

580
00:32:02,920 --> 00:32:06,640
Speaker 1: plays in the development of firecrackers. So back to the

581
00:32:06,680 --> 00:32:08,880
Speaker 1: principles of fire. You know, we've talked about a number

582
00:32:08,880 --> 00:32:11,480
Speaker 1: of times. What does fire need in order to burn?

583
00:32:11,920 --> 00:32:15,360
Speaker 1: It needs fuel, It needs heat, and it needs oxygen

584
00:32:15,480 --> 00:32:19,400
Speaker 1: because fire is a chemical reaction in which fuel reacts

585
00:32:19,440 --> 00:32:24,520
Speaker 1: with oxygen underheat to produce byproducts of primarily carbon dioxide

586
00:32:24,520 --> 00:32:28,200
Speaker 1: and water vapor with other trace elements and molecules given off.

587
00:32:28,680 --> 00:32:33,440
Speaker 1: And potassium nitrate or saltpeter can aid in the process

588
00:32:33,480 --> 00:32:38,040
Speaker 1: of combustion because of its chemical composition. So potassium nitrate

589
00:32:38,160 --> 00:32:41,200
Speaker 1: is made out of one nitrogen atom, one potassium atom,

590
00:32:41,520 --> 00:32:45,080
Speaker 1: and three oxygen atoms, and the key to its role

591
00:32:45,120 --> 00:32:48,480
Speaker 1: in combustion is is those three oxygen atoms. It is

592
00:32:48,520 --> 00:32:53,160
Speaker 1: an oxygen donor to the combustion process. Fire can only

593
00:32:53,320 --> 00:32:57,040
Speaker 1: burn as fast as it can access oxygen to react

594
00:32:57,120 --> 00:32:59,800
Speaker 1: with the fuel. Remember it's a reaction. Now, of course,

595
00:32:59,880 --> 00:33:02,480
Speaker 1: the atmosphere is full of oxygen so there's you know,

596
00:33:03,240 --> 00:33:06,280
Speaker 1: on Earth, it's pretty easy to get fire going if

597
00:33:06,280 --> 00:33:08,760
Speaker 1: you have enough heat and fuel because there's just free

598
00:33:08,760 --> 00:33:12,320
Speaker 1: oxygen all over the place. But the surface of a

599
00:33:12,360 --> 00:33:17,160
Speaker 1: burning log can still only access so much atmospheric oxygen

600
00:33:17,240 --> 00:33:19,880
Speaker 1: at once, right like you know, there it's giving off

601
00:33:20,160 --> 00:33:23,120
Speaker 1: chemicals and gases as it burns, of course, and then

602
00:33:23,120 --> 00:33:25,920
Speaker 1: there's it can really only react with the oxygen that's

603
00:33:26,120 --> 00:33:28,960
Speaker 1: sort of touching right along the edge of the log.

604
00:33:29,360 --> 00:33:32,479
Speaker 1: So there is there's a limit to the rate of

605
00:33:32,520 --> 00:33:36,520
Speaker 1: combustion imposed by the amount of oxygen available to react.

606
00:33:36,560 --> 00:33:40,200
Speaker 1: At the same time, potassium nitrate plays the role of

607
00:33:40,240 --> 00:33:44,360
Speaker 1: an oxidizer in the combustion reactions. It provides a ready

608
00:33:44,400 --> 00:33:48,160
Speaker 1: supply of extra oxygen, so in the presence of heat

609
00:33:48,200 --> 00:33:52,720
Speaker 1: and fuel, saltpeter will massively accelerate the speed at which

610
00:33:52,760 --> 00:33:56,880
Speaker 1: fuel burns, meaning you get often something beyond simple burning

611
00:33:56,960 --> 00:34:00,920
Speaker 1: and something that that qualifies as an explosion. And this

612
00:34:01,000 --> 00:34:03,800
Speaker 1: is where the Chinese alchemists come in now. And now

613
00:34:03,800 --> 00:34:06,520
Speaker 1: we refer to them as alchemists, but obviously we're using

614
00:34:07,200 --> 00:34:09,960
Speaker 1: we have Western alchemy and then we have Chinese alchemy,

615
00:34:10,160 --> 00:34:13,279
Speaker 1: and uh, they're directly comparable in a number of ways.

616
00:34:13,320 --> 00:34:15,799
Speaker 1: I mean, ultimately, you're dealing with with people on both

617
00:34:15,800 --> 00:34:18,759
Speaker 1: sides that are attempting to to figure out what substances

618
00:34:18,840 --> 00:34:21,719
Speaker 1: do and what they can achieve in various combinations with

619
00:34:21,760 --> 00:34:25,080
Speaker 1: each other. Right, And these practices are usually some combination

620
00:34:25,200 --> 00:34:28,640
Speaker 1: actually of real scientific study of the material properties of

621
00:34:28,640 --> 00:34:32,560
Speaker 1: different chemicals and a lot of magical beliefs mixed in. Yes,

622
00:34:32,640 --> 00:34:35,760
Speaker 1: And in this particular case, uh, it said that the

623
00:34:35,800 --> 00:34:39,160
Speaker 1: alchemist in general were attempting to create pills of immortality

624
00:34:39,320 --> 00:34:44,240
Speaker 1: or dan, which interestingly involved mixing up a compound of saltpeter, sulfur,

625
00:34:44,560 --> 00:34:48,080
Speaker 1: and charcoal. And you might be wondering why these particular

626
00:34:48,120 --> 00:34:51,200
Speaker 1: substance as well. For instance, sulfur was used for skin ailments,

627
00:34:51,520 --> 00:34:54,840
Speaker 1: saltpeter for fever. And uh, the thing is when you

628
00:34:54,920 --> 00:34:58,000
Speaker 1: hit just the right percentages here according to one for

629
00:34:58,000 --> 00:35:00,480
Speaker 1: for saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal, it would be like sixty one,

630
00:35:01,880 --> 00:35:05,600
Speaker 1: thirty and seven point six percent. Put it all together

631
00:35:05,960 --> 00:35:09,240
Speaker 1: and you have gunpowder. Yeah, And that gunpowder comes together

632
00:35:09,360 --> 00:35:13,760
Speaker 1: because you have mixed up the oxidizer which is the saltpeter,

633
00:35:13,920 --> 00:35:17,080
Speaker 1: the potassium nitrate, and the fuel which is the charcoal

634
00:35:17,120 --> 00:35:19,279
Speaker 1: and the sulfur, and so once you mix them all

635
00:35:19,320 --> 00:35:23,240
Speaker 1: together like that, they can create something that burns suddenly,

636
00:35:23,520 --> 00:35:28,040
Speaker 1: very rapidly. Now, in some traditions, some accounts, this discovery

637
00:35:28,320 --> 00:35:33,839
Speaker 1: is attributed to a particular individual, Sun sim Now, who

638
00:35:34,040 --> 00:35:38,279
Speaker 1: would have been born in UH five, and he was

639
00:35:38,600 --> 00:35:41,840
Speaker 1: the so called King of Medicine. He wrote um in

640
00:35:41,880 --> 00:35:46,200
Speaker 1: the translations of the titles essential Formulas for Emergencies worth

641
00:35:46,200 --> 00:35:49,000
Speaker 1: a thousand pieces of Gold and then a follow up

642
00:35:49,239 --> 00:35:52,319
Speaker 1: supplement to the Formulas of a thousand gold worth. And

643
00:35:52,400 --> 00:35:58,959
Speaker 1: even in translation, those are simply marvelous titles. So it's yeah,

644
00:35:59,040 --> 00:36:01,960
Speaker 1: that's great. My next novel should be called The Story

645
00:36:02,080 --> 00:36:04,600
Speaker 1: That's Worth a Million bucks. There you go, it's just

646
00:36:04,640 --> 00:36:09,480
Speaker 1: good marketing. Now, it seems like it's unlikely that that

647
00:36:09,520 --> 00:36:13,359
Speaker 1: this individual actually invented gunpowder, but he certainly recorded its

648
00:36:13,560 --> 00:36:17,359
Speaker 1: usage uh in particularly in a book Optimization of Alchemical

649
00:36:17,480 --> 00:36:21,680
Speaker 1: Processes by Sulfuric Method again translation, and it's it seemingly

650
00:36:21,719 --> 00:36:25,680
Speaker 1: the oldest known reference to gunpowder, and so we can

651
00:36:25,719 --> 00:36:29,080
Speaker 1: trace it roughly to his lifetime or you know, probably before.

652
00:36:29,520 --> 00:36:33,520
Speaker 1: And interestingly, with its medicinal roots, gunpowder continued to be

653
00:36:33,640 --> 00:36:37,240
Speaker 1: used as a curative property in um in in traditional

654
00:36:37,320 --> 00:36:39,879
Speaker 1: Chinese medicine for things like ring worm and various skin

655
00:36:39,960 --> 00:36:43,200
Speaker 1: issues into the sixteenth century. Yeah, and of course, saltpeter

656
00:36:43,360 --> 00:36:46,960
Speaker 1: had many uses outside the creation of say, elixirs of

657
00:36:47,000 --> 00:36:51,280
Speaker 1: immortality or or the creation of gunpowder. For example, saltpeter

658
00:36:51,440 --> 00:36:55,880
Speaker 1: has long been a preservative for certain kinds of foods.

659
00:36:55,960 --> 00:36:58,719
Speaker 1: You know, it's been a preservative for meats. In a way,

660
00:36:58,760 --> 00:37:04,040
Speaker 1: it's an elixir of immort reality for salami exactly. Now,

661
00:37:04,080 --> 00:37:08,160
Speaker 1: obviously gunpowder has its own enormous history, and it's gonna

662
00:37:08,239 --> 00:37:12,200
Speaker 1: end up playing a much bigger role in global affairs

663
00:37:12,200 --> 00:37:15,320
Speaker 1: in the centuries to follow. But the Chinese, this is essential,

664
00:37:15,480 --> 00:37:18,440
Speaker 1: essential to to point out, the Chinese realized its military

665
00:37:18,440 --> 00:37:22,200
Speaker 1: potential pretty early on, like during the Tang dynasty, and

666
00:37:22,239 --> 00:37:25,520
Speaker 1: it was compiled in Chinese military text by ten forty.

667
00:37:25,560 --> 00:37:28,480
Speaker 1: And this is notable because there's something of this this

668
00:37:28,719 --> 00:37:32,920
Speaker 1: myth in Western traditions that while the Chinese invention gunpowder

669
00:37:32,960 --> 00:37:36,520
Speaker 1: would ultimately require Western ingenuity to take off as a weapon,

670
00:37:36,960 --> 00:37:40,800
Speaker 1: The idea that the Chinese invented something but didn't really

671
00:37:40,960 --> 00:37:43,640
Speaker 1: understand what they'd invented, and nothing could really be further

672
00:37:43,680 --> 00:37:48,480
Speaker 1: from the truth, because they developed rockets, fire arrows, fire lances.

673
00:37:48,800 --> 00:37:52,880
Speaker 1: They were using UH long bamboo tubes that were packed

674
00:37:52,920 --> 00:37:56,320
Speaker 1: with with gunpowder as early as like even thirty two,

675
00:37:56,640 --> 00:38:00,000
Speaker 1: and there's evidence of bronze cannons as early as UH

676
00:38:00,239 --> 00:38:03,799
Speaker 1: thirteen thirty two or eleven twenty eight. Even so, the

677
00:38:03,920 --> 00:38:07,120
Speaker 1: use of military gunpowder advancements was very much a part

678
00:38:07,360 --> 00:38:10,239
Speaker 1: of the Chinese world at the time, and it's just

679
00:38:10,280 --> 00:38:14,319
Speaker 1: spread outward from there, transforming warfare everywhere it went. And

680
00:38:14,360 --> 00:38:19,640
Speaker 1: it's interesting to consider the ongoing relationship between recreational fireworks

681
00:38:19,680 --> 00:38:23,239
Speaker 1: and warfare because obviously the same chemicals can be used

682
00:38:23,280 --> 00:38:26,239
Speaker 1: for both. You know, you can use gunpowder to make

683
00:38:26,360 --> 00:38:30,279
Speaker 1: a harmless celebratory device or to make a cannon that

684
00:38:30,400 --> 00:38:35,480
Speaker 1: kills people. And it's interesting how this association has remained

685
00:38:35,480 --> 00:38:39,600
Speaker 1: in people's minds throughout the centuries because very often celebratory

686
00:38:39,600 --> 00:38:42,319
Speaker 1: fireworks not not always, but very often are used to

687
00:38:42,400 --> 00:38:45,839
Speaker 1: celebrate things like military victory. Is it's almost like they

688
00:38:45,920 --> 00:38:49,319
Speaker 1: call to mind the battle that you're thinking back on

689
00:38:49,440 --> 00:38:52,040
Speaker 1: and celebrating. Oh yeah, I mean, we see that in

690
00:38:52,719 --> 00:38:55,000
Speaker 1: the United States with the Star Spangled banner, which is

691
00:38:55,000 --> 00:38:57,960
Speaker 1: talking about stuff blowing up in the sky, and then

692
00:38:58,400 --> 00:39:01,560
Speaker 1: especially around the fourth of July, is uh is paired

693
00:39:01,600 --> 00:39:04,839
Speaker 1: with actual fireworks exploding in the sky. To get back

694
00:39:04,880 --> 00:39:08,240
Speaker 1: into this world of fireworks proper, we in the Chinese origins.

695
00:39:08,280 --> 00:39:11,800
Speaker 1: We can see how explosive and combustive substances come together

696
00:39:12,200 --> 00:39:15,040
Speaker 1: with boo jou. You know. But let's not forget the

697
00:39:15,040 --> 00:39:17,640
Speaker 1: other aspect of fireworks, the part that you you might

698
00:39:17,640 --> 00:39:20,120
Speaker 1: not think about as much when you buy a bunch

699
00:39:20,160 --> 00:39:23,319
Speaker 1: of fireworks or even when you set them off at night.

700
00:39:23,640 --> 00:39:25,600
Speaker 1: But the next day, when you go to clean up

701
00:39:25,600 --> 00:39:28,920
Speaker 1: your yard, Uh, you're going to encounter the reality of

702
00:39:28,960 --> 00:39:33,719
Speaker 1: all the paper and cardboard that makes a firework possible. Yeah.

703
00:39:33,760 --> 00:39:35,760
Speaker 1: It often looks like there has been like a battle

704
00:39:35,880 --> 00:39:40,439
Speaker 1: between armies of toilet paper rolls that just hacked each

705
00:39:40,440 --> 00:39:43,400
Speaker 1: other to bits. Yeah, because even today fireworks depend on

706
00:39:43,480 --> 00:39:46,600
Speaker 1: paper and cardboard. That tank you were describing earlier was

707
00:39:46,680 --> 00:39:51,080
Speaker 1: inevitably made out of cardboard and paper. But as we

708
00:39:51,120 --> 00:39:53,960
Speaker 1: explored in our recent two part on Stuff to with

709
00:39:54,080 --> 00:39:56,840
Speaker 1: your Mind about the invention of the book the history

710
00:39:56,840 --> 00:40:00,040
Speaker 1: of the book, paper was an expensive luxury in in

711
00:40:00,200 --> 00:40:03,960
Speaker 1: olden times. Uh. Chinese paper had already been around for centuries.

712
00:40:04,000 --> 00:40:07,480
Speaker 1: But but it was it was a it was a

713
00:40:07,600 --> 00:40:09,400
Speaker 1: high priced substance. This is not the kind of thing

714
00:40:09,400 --> 00:40:12,759
Speaker 1: you would just readily filled with gunpowder and set off

715
00:40:12,880 --> 00:40:15,839
Speaker 1: or burn. But then during the Song dynasty we see

716
00:40:15,840 --> 00:40:18,600
Speaker 1: the creation of bamboo paper, which was much more affordable,

717
00:40:18,960 --> 00:40:22,239
Speaker 1: and so this was finally paper that was cost effective

718
00:40:22,400 --> 00:40:26,240
Speaker 1: enough to use in fireworks. Uh, you know, pure fireworks,

719
00:40:26,239 --> 00:40:29,120
Speaker 1: the kind of fire not not just the things that

720
00:40:29,200 --> 00:40:31,759
Speaker 1: might amuse um, you know, individuals of great wealth, but

721
00:40:31,920 --> 00:40:34,360
Speaker 1: something that could be you know, a little more available

722
00:40:34,440 --> 00:40:39,080
Speaker 1: to everyone else. Yeah, there is. There's the main explosive charge,

723
00:40:39,200 --> 00:40:42,719
Speaker 1: and that's wrapped together with a timed ignition device, which

724
00:40:42,760 --> 00:40:45,200
Speaker 1: is the fuse. It used to be called the match.

725
00:40:45,680 --> 00:40:47,799
Speaker 1: Now a number of you are probably thinking, well, that's

726
00:40:47,800 --> 00:40:52,040
Speaker 1: a firecracker, and maybe that is essentially a bottle rocket.

727
00:40:52,400 --> 00:40:56,279
Speaker 1: But obviously there are plenty of more elaborate fireworks. I mean,

728
00:40:56,280 --> 00:41:00,160
Speaker 1: they're just thousands of types of fireworks today, and and

729
00:41:00,400 --> 00:41:04,120
Speaker 1: these the more traditional, these sort of exploding, sparkling, colorful fireworks.

730
00:41:04,120 --> 00:41:06,640
Speaker 1: This sort of thing didn't become popular in China until

731
00:41:06,719 --> 00:41:10,080
Speaker 1: apparently the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. During the last Dynastic

732
00:41:10,160 --> 00:41:14,920
Speaker 1: period of China, the Queen dynasty, and one writes that

733
00:41:15,040 --> 00:41:18,400
Speaker 1: some historians credit fireworks credit these type this type of

734
00:41:18,400 --> 00:41:21,080
Speaker 1: firework technology to a specialist by the name of Le

735
00:41:21,280 --> 00:41:25,879
Speaker 1: Tai Uh, saying that he basically invented these four when

736
00:41:25,880 --> 00:41:28,400
Speaker 1: he was asked by the Jong Jing emperor to create

737
00:41:28,480 --> 00:41:31,239
Speaker 1: something special. And the story goes that he's, you know,

738
00:41:31,280 --> 00:41:33,240
Speaker 1: he's been asked to create some sort of special fireworks.

739
00:41:33,360 --> 00:41:36,440
Speaker 1: He goes out and he notices all the colorful sparks

740
00:41:36,480 --> 00:41:39,560
Speaker 1: that are that are inside of a blackmith's shop as

741
00:41:39,560 --> 00:41:42,560
Speaker 1: the blacksmith is Uh is pounding away at the steel

742
00:41:42,719 --> 00:41:45,720
Speaker 1: and he decides to experiment with different sizes of iron

743
00:41:45,880 --> 00:41:49,239
Speaker 1: particles mixed with the gunpowder. Yeah, and this actually does

744
00:41:49,280 --> 00:41:53,600
Speaker 1: connect to the way that most colored fireworks displays are

745
00:41:53,640 --> 00:41:57,920
Speaker 1: created today. They're they're often produced by by packing fireworks

746
00:41:57,960 --> 00:42:01,719
Speaker 1: shells with these little pellets and as stars that include

747
00:42:01,800 --> 00:42:06,600
Speaker 1: different types of chemicals. Often metal salts that wind burned

748
00:42:07,040 --> 00:42:10,759
Speaker 1: create different colors. So, for example, red fireworks often have

749
00:42:10,920 --> 00:42:15,840
Speaker 1: some kind of strontium content like strontium carbonate, or orange

750
00:42:15,880 --> 00:42:19,440
Speaker 1: fireworks might have calcium chloride and so forth. Apparently, blue

751
00:42:19,480 --> 00:42:22,080
Speaker 1: fireworks are one of the hardest colors to make, and

752
00:42:22,440 --> 00:42:26,759
Speaker 1: that requires a copper or copper chloride content. But the

753
00:42:26,800 --> 00:42:29,920
Speaker 1: most common form of fireworks you see in big festival

754
00:42:29,960 --> 00:42:33,000
Speaker 1: displays today, you know, not the little firecrackers you set

755
00:42:33,040 --> 00:42:35,319
Speaker 1: off in your yard, but big festival displays. These would

756
00:42:35,360 --> 00:42:38,040
Speaker 1: generally use what might be known as the mortar or

757
00:42:38,080 --> 00:42:41,799
Speaker 1: the shell model. So you've got a core explosive charge

758
00:42:42,160 --> 00:42:45,480
Speaker 1: that's usually made out of black powder and a lift charge.

759
00:42:45,680 --> 00:42:48,560
Speaker 1: It burns quickly. It it expands and turns into heat

760
00:42:48,600 --> 00:42:50,960
Speaker 1: and gas. It shoots it up into the sky and

761
00:42:51,000 --> 00:42:54,000
Speaker 1: then it is the fuses time so that when it's

762
00:42:54,000 --> 00:42:56,920
Speaker 1: way up in the sky, it will reach the center

763
00:42:57,000 --> 00:43:00,719
Speaker 1: charge and then it will explode and shell will be

764
00:43:00,800 --> 00:43:04,000
Speaker 1: packed with all these little things, these little explosive balls

765
00:43:04,080 --> 00:43:08,879
Speaker 1: called stars, and the stars can be packed in special arrangements,

766
00:43:08,920 --> 00:43:11,759
Speaker 1: and the arrangements of the stars within the shell is

767
00:43:11,880 --> 00:43:15,279
Speaker 1: usually what gives rise to the patterns of the exploding fireworks.

768
00:43:15,280 --> 00:43:19,239
Speaker 1: And they're they're actually artisans who will make special fireworks

769
00:43:19,239 --> 00:43:22,160
Speaker 1: like custom packing of the stars inside to give you

770
00:43:22,200 --> 00:43:24,480
Speaker 1: the color you want in the shape of the explosion

771
00:43:24,520 --> 00:43:26,640
Speaker 1: you want. So you can get hearts, you can get

772
00:43:26,640 --> 00:43:29,680
Speaker 1: smiley faces or whatever, and I just got to share.

773
00:43:29,680 --> 00:43:33,200
Speaker 1: By the way, I found a Wikipedia article with one

774
00:43:33,239 --> 00:43:36,600
Speaker 1: of the best sentences in English I've ever read. I

775
00:43:36,680 --> 00:43:38,680
Speaker 1: was looking at this the other day. It's from a

776
00:43:38,680 --> 00:43:42,600
Speaker 1: Wiki article about pyrotechnic stars, and the sentence goes, pumped

777
00:43:42,640 --> 00:43:46,480
Speaker 1: stars are stars that have been pumped using a star pump.

778
00:43:48,280 --> 00:43:50,560
Speaker 1: I love that because, out of context, it's just a

779
00:43:50,600 --> 00:43:53,920
Speaker 1: sentence that says nothing. I was trying to think, are

780
00:43:53,920 --> 00:43:56,719
Speaker 1: there any other ways ways you could plug words into

781
00:43:56,760 --> 00:43:58,879
Speaker 1: that sentence structure to make it work? I was thinking,

782
00:43:58,880 --> 00:44:01,560
Speaker 1: wait a minute, cook to rice is rice that has

783
00:44:01,600 --> 00:44:05,720
Speaker 1: been cooked using a rice cooker. There you've done quite work, though,

784
00:44:05,760 --> 00:44:08,279
Speaker 1: because you can cook rice other ways. I don't know.

785
00:44:08,480 --> 00:44:11,280
Speaker 1: But it's star pump as it has only one function,

786
00:44:11,280 --> 00:44:13,880
Speaker 1: and that is two pump stars. It's true. Alright. On

787
00:44:13,920 --> 00:44:15,600
Speaker 1: that note, we're going to take one more break, but

788
00:44:15,640 --> 00:44:18,000
Speaker 1: when we come back we'll get into some of the

789
00:44:18,040 --> 00:44:24,080
Speaker 1: Western tradition of fireworks. Thank thank thank Alright, we're back.

790
00:44:24,400 --> 00:44:27,480
Speaker 1: So I wanted to look at a post on the

791
00:44:27,520 --> 00:44:32,279
Speaker 1: always Wonderful Medieval Manuscripts blog on the British Library website.

792
00:44:32,320 --> 00:44:35,200
Speaker 1: This post is by Alison Ray. I feel like I've

793
00:44:35,200 --> 00:44:37,480
Speaker 1: mentioned pieces by this blog on the show before. I

794
00:44:37,520 --> 00:44:40,040
Speaker 1: think we discussed an awesome one they had about anti

795
00:44:40,160 --> 00:44:44,319
Speaker 1: theft curses in medieval manuscripts. Yes, it's just a really

796
00:44:44,400 --> 00:44:47,040
Speaker 1: great blog to follow, and I'm actually going to reference

797
00:44:47,040 --> 00:44:50,040
Speaker 1: a couple of posts that I came across in this episode.

798
00:44:50,360 --> 00:44:53,319
Speaker 1: So this one talks about how fireworks have been a

799
00:44:53,360 --> 00:44:56,719
Speaker 1: popular source of entertainment in England since as early as

800
00:44:56,760 --> 00:45:00,799
Speaker 1: the fifteenth century. Ray writes that the first recorded use

801
00:45:00,800 --> 00:45:04,280
Speaker 1: of fireworks in England was at King Henry the Seventh

802
00:45:04,440 --> 00:45:07,960
Speaker 1: wedding celebration in fourteen eight six. And I have seen

803
00:45:08,000 --> 00:45:10,560
Speaker 1: this historical claim made all over the place, and I

804
00:45:10,600 --> 00:45:13,920
Speaker 1: was trying to find contemporary documentation, or at least the

805
00:45:13,960 --> 00:45:16,799
Speaker 1: earliest documentation of it I could, and I could not

806
00:45:16,960 --> 00:45:20,879
Speaker 1: find that. It makes me wonder how modern writers know this,

807
00:45:20,960 --> 00:45:23,680
Speaker 1: But I assumed that the British Library bloggers have their

808
00:45:23,719 --> 00:45:26,040
Speaker 1: their history sorted out, so I'll trust him on this one.

809
00:45:27,160 --> 00:45:30,240
Speaker 1: So the wedding of King Henry the Seventh. King Henry

810
00:45:30,280 --> 00:45:33,120
Speaker 1: was also known as Henry Tudor and his ascent to

811
00:45:33,160 --> 00:45:36,640
Speaker 1: the throne was the ultimate conclusion of the Wars of

812
00:45:36,680 --> 00:45:40,680
Speaker 1: the Roses, where the houses of Lancaster and York had

813
00:45:40,719 --> 00:45:44,000
Speaker 1: struggled for control of England for like three decades. This

814
00:45:44,120 --> 00:45:48,720
Speaker 1: is chronicled with some propagandistic slant in Shakespeare's play Richard

815
00:45:48,760 --> 00:45:51,280
Speaker 1: the Third. Of course, Richard the Third was the last

816
00:45:51,320 --> 00:45:54,960
Speaker 1: of the York kings. Henry had some kind of roughly

817
00:45:55,080 --> 00:45:58,560
Speaker 1: thirty seventh in line succession claim to the throne through

818
00:45:58,640 --> 00:46:01,880
Speaker 1: the line of lancast Her, but he really came to

819
00:46:01,920 --> 00:46:06,200
Speaker 1: power through some political maneuvering and military victory, so his

820
00:46:06,320 --> 00:46:08,799
Speaker 1: claim was of course through the Lancaster line. But he

821
00:46:08,840 --> 00:46:12,800
Speaker 1: apparently got in position for power by swearing to marry

822
00:46:12,840 --> 00:46:16,759
Speaker 1: Elizabeth of York, which would unite the two houses if

823
00:46:16,800 --> 00:46:20,040
Speaker 1: he was victorious and Richard. Richard the third had enemies

824
00:46:20,080 --> 00:46:23,680
Speaker 1: within his own house, so with some French support, Henry

825
00:46:23,719 --> 00:46:27,000
Speaker 1: the Seventh landed in Wales in fourteen eighty five. He

826
00:46:27,120 --> 00:46:30,960
Speaker 1: led an army against Richard's power center in London. Richard

827
00:46:31,000 --> 00:46:33,600
Speaker 1: took an army out to meet him. Henry and Richard's

828
00:46:33,680 --> 00:46:37,320
Speaker 1: forces fought a conclusive battle at Bosworth Field on August

829
00:46:37,440 --> 00:46:42,120
Speaker 1: two five, where Richard was killed in the fighting, allegedly

830
00:46:42,160 --> 00:46:45,000
Speaker 1: while trying to like strike deep behind enemy ranks and

831
00:46:45,080 --> 00:46:48,680
Speaker 1: kill Henry himself to in the war immediately, and Richard

832
00:46:48,719 --> 00:46:51,880
Speaker 1: the Third was apparently the last English king killed in battle.

833
00:46:52,239 --> 00:46:55,400
Speaker 1: So after the battle Henry is victorious, He's like, well, okay,

834
00:46:55,440 --> 00:46:58,480
Speaker 1: you know, I've basically got a claim to the throne

835
00:46:58,480 --> 00:47:01,520
Speaker 1: by succession. I just wanted battle, which means God must

836
00:47:01,560 --> 00:47:05,000
Speaker 1: want me to be king. So Henry was crowned at

837
00:47:05,000 --> 00:47:08,160
Speaker 1: the end of October fourteen eighty five, and true to

838
00:47:08,239 --> 00:47:11,600
Speaker 1: his promise, he married Elizabeth of York in January fourteen

839
00:47:11,680 --> 00:47:15,400
Speaker 1: eighty six. And this marriage was of greater than normal

840
00:47:15,520 --> 00:47:19,200
Speaker 1: political importance. It was more than just the pageantry of

841
00:47:18,680 --> 00:47:21,720
Speaker 1: a of a royal wedding. It was in some ways

842
00:47:21,760 --> 00:47:25,680
Speaker 1: the symbolic extinguishment of a dynastic war that had been

843
00:47:25,760 --> 00:47:28,600
Speaker 1: raging for about thirty years. So why not a little

844
00:47:28,600 --> 00:47:33,080
Speaker 1: extra celebration, Why not blow something up right. Ray's blog

845
00:47:33,120 --> 00:47:37,719
Speaker 1: post also points to a fourteenth century manuscript known as

846
00:47:37,760 --> 00:47:42,359
Speaker 1: the British Library royal Ms twelve b. Twenty five. This

847
00:47:42,480 --> 00:47:46,959
Speaker 1: is primarily a medical text. It talks about bodily humors,

848
00:47:46,960 --> 00:47:52,480
Speaker 1: herbal medicines, astrology, but it's got a recipe for fireworks,

849
00:47:52,680 --> 00:47:58,960
Speaker 1: specifically fireworks rockets, and the burning glass. And according to Ray,

850
00:47:59,120 --> 00:48:01,880
Speaker 1: the opening to the section on the recipes for combustion

851
00:48:02,440 --> 00:48:07,200
Speaker 1: begins with references quote to Greek fire, an incendiary weapon

852
00:48:07,280 --> 00:48:11,040
Speaker 1: first used by Byzantine forces against Arabic naval fleets steering

853
00:48:11,080 --> 00:48:14,920
Speaker 1: Sieges on Constantinople in the late seventh century. So I

854
00:48:14,960 --> 00:48:18,400
Speaker 1: think it's very interesting that a fourteenth century writer in

855
00:48:18,480 --> 00:48:21,880
Speaker 1: English would say, Okay, here's a recipe for making fun

856
00:48:22,080 --> 00:48:25,880
Speaker 1: recreational fireworks, but let's introduce it by talking about this

857
00:48:26,040 --> 00:48:29,120
Speaker 1: terror weapon. Yeah, yeah, the terror weapon of the of

858
00:48:29,160 --> 00:48:32,279
Speaker 1: the Byzantines, which which we have an entire episode on

859
00:48:32,480 --> 00:48:34,680
Speaker 1: in the vault if anyone wants to listen to it.

860
00:48:34,880 --> 00:48:37,960
Speaker 1: But apparently because of the danger posed by fireworks, the

861
00:48:38,000 --> 00:48:42,360
Speaker 1: manuscript accompanies its recipes with protective magic spells that you

862
00:48:42,400 --> 00:48:46,760
Speaker 1: can use against the fire. Quote. The protective charms against

863
00:48:46,800 --> 00:48:51,360
Speaker 1: fire invokes St. Column Seal also known as Columba or

864
00:48:51,480 --> 00:48:55,920
Speaker 1: column Kill, and st Agatha for protection. St Agatha was

865
00:48:55,960 --> 00:49:01,520
Speaker 1: a patron saint against fire, lightning, and volcanic eruption. Uh

866
00:49:01,560 --> 00:49:05,239
Speaker 1: protective charms may seem unorthodox to us today, but they

867
00:49:05,239 --> 00:49:08,320
Speaker 1: were often employed in the same manner as medical recipes

868
00:49:08,400 --> 00:49:11,160
Speaker 1: and religious prayers. And this is something we've talked about

869
00:49:11,200 --> 00:49:13,680
Speaker 1: on the show before. How In, in late medieval and

870
00:49:13,800 --> 00:49:17,120
Speaker 1: early modern writing in Europe, there's a lot of thinking

871
00:49:17,160 --> 00:49:21,480
Speaker 1: that just blends magic and naturalistic or scientific knowledge, as

872
00:49:21,480 --> 00:49:24,360
Speaker 1: if there were no real difference between them. You know,

873
00:49:24,480 --> 00:49:27,320
Speaker 1: here's how to make an explosive powder. Here's a magic

874
00:49:27,360 --> 00:49:30,880
Speaker 1: spell to cure warts. Here's a recipe for toothpaste. Here's

875
00:49:30,880 --> 00:49:33,719
Speaker 1: how to know if a witch is giving you a rash.

876
00:49:33,880 --> 00:49:36,920
Speaker 1: There's another British Library manuscript profile I wanted to mention,

877
00:49:37,000 --> 00:49:41,239
Speaker 1: this one by curator Maddie smith In. And this is

878
00:49:41,280 --> 00:49:45,680
Speaker 1: of a seventeenth century book called Pyrotechnica, written by a

879
00:49:45,800 --> 00:49:49,600
Speaker 1: gunner named John Babington. And it's the first book in

880
00:49:49,680 --> 00:49:53,200
Speaker 1: English that is known to be entirely about how to

881
00:49:53,239 --> 00:49:58,000
Speaker 1: make fireworks for fun. It's entirely a book about recreational fireworks. Now, again,

882
00:49:58,160 --> 00:50:00,440
Speaker 1: this is a much later work, maybe on us three

883
00:50:00,520 --> 00:50:04,520
Speaker 1: hundred years later than the previous manuscript. It is widely

884
00:50:04,560 --> 00:50:09,320
Speaker 1: attested that Queen Elizabeth the First of England loved fireworks.

885
00:50:09,480 --> 00:50:11,960
Speaker 1: And note that Queen Elizabeth the First is different from

886
00:50:12,000 --> 00:50:15,200
Speaker 1: Elizabeth of York, who married Henry the seventh Queen Elizabeth

887
00:50:15,200 --> 00:50:18,040
Speaker 1: the First ruled from fifteen fifty eight until her death

888
00:50:18,040 --> 00:50:21,560
Speaker 1: in sixteen oh three. I was looking for examples of

889
00:50:21,600 --> 00:50:24,759
Speaker 1: her legendary love of fireworks, and I came across a

890
00:50:24,920 --> 00:50:29,800
Speaker 1: letter written by a man named Lanahan describing the Queen's

891
00:50:29,880 --> 00:50:34,400
Speaker 1: visit to Kinnelworth Castle in fifteen seventy five. And lanaham

892
00:50:34,520 --> 00:50:38,480
Speaker 1: describes it like this quote. On the Sunday night, after

893
00:50:38,560 --> 00:50:41,279
Speaker 1: a warning piece or two, there was a blaze of

894
00:50:41,400 --> 00:50:47,480
Speaker 1: burning darts flying to and fro, beams of stars, coruscant streams,

895
00:50:47,520 --> 00:50:51,920
Speaker 1: and hail of fire sparks, lightnings of wildfire on the

896
00:50:51,960 --> 00:50:56,320
Speaker 1: water and on the land, flight and shot of thunderbolts,

897
00:50:56,360 --> 00:51:01,200
Speaker 1: all with such continuance, terror and vehemence. The heavens thundered,

898
00:51:01,360 --> 00:51:05,000
Speaker 1: the water surged, and the earth shook. Oh man, that's

899
00:51:05,280 --> 00:51:08,000
Speaker 1: that's that's that's a great description. Shades of deep purple,

900
00:51:08,160 --> 00:51:10,520
Speaker 1: but a great description. Well, you know, it doesn't it

901
00:51:10,600 --> 00:51:14,560
Speaker 1: doesn't sound fun. It sounds really scary. Yeah, well, I

902
00:51:14,640 --> 00:51:18,319
Speaker 1: mean that's that. Those were my earliest experiences of fireworks,

903
00:51:18,360 --> 00:51:21,600
Speaker 1: just being terrified. So, uh, you know, feeling a sense

904
00:51:21,640 --> 00:51:24,799
Speaker 1: of terror or safe terror is kind of part of it, right, yeah,

905
00:51:24,880 --> 00:51:28,640
Speaker 1: that might be true. Of course, Shakespeare mentions fireworks in

906
00:51:28,680 --> 00:51:30,440
Speaker 1: a number of his plays, or at least in one

907
00:51:30,520 --> 00:51:34,080
Speaker 1: or two plays. There's there's a scene in Love's Labor's Lost, uh,

908
00:51:34,160 --> 00:51:36,440
Speaker 1: where a character says, quote, the King would have me

909
00:51:36,520 --> 00:51:41,000
Speaker 1: present the Princess sweet Chuck with some delightful ostentation or

910
00:51:41,080 --> 00:51:46,279
Speaker 1: show or pageant or antique or firework. And apparently Queen

911
00:51:46,280 --> 00:51:50,640
Speaker 1: Elizabeth liked fireworks so much that she commissioned a lord

912
00:51:50,719 --> 00:51:54,480
Speaker 1: of fireworks to be in charge of the whole process

913
00:51:54,520 --> 00:51:56,720
Speaker 1: that would come to be known as the fire Master

914
00:51:56,840 --> 00:52:01,359
Speaker 1: of England, whose assistance were called green men because they

915
00:52:01,360 --> 00:52:04,400
Speaker 1: wore hats made out of leaves to protect their heads

916
00:52:04,480 --> 00:52:08,880
Speaker 1: from fire and sparks. So Queen Elizabeth had a pyromancer.

917
00:52:11,000 --> 00:52:13,680
Speaker 1: That's awesome, and they're running about in these uh, in

918
00:52:13,960 --> 00:52:16,520
Speaker 1: these green hats but you know, made out of like

919
00:52:16,760 --> 00:52:20,560
Speaker 1: green leaves. I mean that sounds very elvin. That reminds

920
00:52:20,600 --> 00:52:22,919
Speaker 1: me of what we discussed in the past about these

921
00:52:23,080 --> 00:52:25,920
Speaker 1: taboos against wearing green because that is the color of

922
00:52:25,960 --> 00:52:29,839
Speaker 1: the fairies. Yeah, totally. I think those ones we talked

923
00:52:29,840 --> 00:52:33,200
Speaker 1: about in the past, for specifically, uh, superstition about young

924
00:52:33,200 --> 00:52:35,880
Speaker 1: women wearing them or they would make the fairy princess

925
00:52:35,960 --> 00:52:39,080
Speaker 1: is jealous. But yeah, I mean, I don't know. If

926
00:52:39,080 --> 00:52:42,080
Speaker 1: you're already dealing with fire and fireworks for a living,

927
00:52:42,080 --> 00:52:45,400
Speaker 1: why not put some leaves on your head. But so, anyway,

928
00:52:45,400 --> 00:52:49,719
Speaker 1: back to this book Pyrotechnic by Babbington. It describes how

929
00:52:49,719 --> 00:52:52,759
Speaker 1: to make a number of regular shell style fireworks of

930
00:52:52,800 --> 00:52:54,960
Speaker 1: the kind we were talking about earlier, and how to

931
00:52:55,000 --> 00:52:58,560
Speaker 1: achieve different colors. Quote for stars of a blue color,

932
00:52:58,719 --> 00:53:03,000
Speaker 1: a combination of gun powder, saltpeter and sulfur VIV did

933
00:53:03,040 --> 00:53:07,400
Speaker 1: the trick. He then progresses to making silver and gold

934
00:53:07,600 --> 00:53:12,440
Speaker 1: rain firework wheels and fizz gigs a French firework that

935
00:53:12,560 --> 00:53:16,520
Speaker 1: fizzled before it exploded. Fizz gig. Yeah, this gig like

936
00:53:16,520 --> 00:53:19,879
Speaker 1: like in the Dark Crystal. But beyond that, Babington goes

937
00:53:19,960 --> 00:53:23,440
Speaker 1: on in his book to give instructions for these elaborate displays,

938
00:53:23,560 --> 00:53:28,680
Speaker 1: such as the dragon. The dragon was a giant wooden

939
00:53:28,880 --> 00:53:32,000
Speaker 1: frame in the shape of a winged serpent that was

940
00:53:32,160 --> 00:53:35,760
Speaker 1: filled and ornamented with all kinds of combustibles that would

941
00:53:35,760 --> 00:53:39,640
Speaker 1: make it breathe fire and spark with fury. And one

942
00:53:39,640 --> 00:53:43,200
Speaker 1: popular way of doing this dragon demonstration was to have

943
00:53:43,360 --> 00:53:46,960
Speaker 1: both a wooden dragon crammed with fireworks and either a

944
00:53:47,120 --> 00:53:50,719
Speaker 1: rival dragon or a figure of St. George, and then

945
00:53:50,760 --> 00:53:54,280
Speaker 1: you would make them fight. Uh so this is from Smith.

946
00:53:54,360 --> 00:53:58,160
Speaker 1: Quote in Pyrotechnica, Babbington instructs the reader to strap the

947
00:53:58,239 --> 00:54:01,440
Speaker 1: dragon and St. George together so that when a wheel

948
00:54:01,600 --> 00:54:05,359
Speaker 1: is turned quote, they will run furiously at each other.

949
00:54:05,920 --> 00:54:09,279
Speaker 1: They had to be well balanced, as otherwise quote they

950
00:54:09,280 --> 00:54:12,160
Speaker 1: would turn their heels upward, which would be a great

951
00:54:12,239 --> 00:54:15,640
Speaker 1: disgrace to the work and the workman. It sounds like

952
00:54:15,680 --> 00:54:18,279
Speaker 1: more of a disgrace that that sounds maybe like an

953
00:54:18,280 --> 00:54:21,799
Speaker 1: extreme safety hazard. You included a shot here of a

954
00:54:21,840 --> 00:54:24,680
Speaker 1: woodcut illustration from this book, and uh, I have to

955
00:54:24,719 --> 00:54:27,879
Speaker 1: say that, combined with the description, this is pure burning man,

956
00:54:28,000 --> 00:54:30,520
Speaker 1: like this is the exact spirit of that sort of

957
00:54:30,520 --> 00:54:35,920
Speaker 1: like a large scale pyro technical display. Yeah, exactly, this

958
00:54:35,960 --> 00:54:39,440
Speaker 1: is Elizabethan burning Man. But so there's a big question here, right, So,

959
00:54:39,560 --> 00:54:43,560
Speaker 1: if if fireworks were probably invented in China and we're

960
00:54:43,680 --> 00:54:47,600
Speaker 1: super popular with the English monarchy by the fifteen hundreds,

961
00:54:47,600 --> 00:54:49,880
Speaker 1: how did they make that journey? How did they get

962
00:54:50,000 --> 00:54:54,720
Speaker 1: from China to Europe and specifically early modern England well,

963
00:54:54,760 --> 00:54:58,640
Speaker 1: it turns out that the first known European to describe

964
00:54:58,680 --> 00:55:03,760
Speaker 1: the creation of black powder was Dr Mirabilis himself. Roger

965
00:55:03,760 --> 00:55:08,360
Speaker 1: Bacon uh the thirteenth century English philosopher proto scientist in

966
00:55:08,480 --> 00:55:13,320
Speaker 1: Franciscan friar and Dr Mirabilis I think it means technically

967
00:55:13,440 --> 00:55:15,759
Speaker 1: wonderful teacher in Latin, but I like to think of

968
00:55:15,840 --> 00:55:20,480
Speaker 1: him as doctor wonderful. So Roger Bacon was born somewhere

969
00:55:20,480 --> 00:55:24,000
Speaker 1: in southwest England, either I think in Somerset or in Gloucestershire,

970
00:55:24,120 --> 00:55:27,960
Speaker 1: between the years twelve fourteen and twelve twenty. More recent

971
00:55:28,000 --> 00:55:31,960
Speaker 1: sources places birth I think around twelve nineteen or twelve twenty,

972
00:55:32,160 --> 00:55:35,200
Speaker 1: and he became a brother of the Franciscan order and

973
00:55:35,360 --> 00:55:39,200
Speaker 1: a scholar of great esteem and controversy. In the modern day,

974
00:55:39,239 --> 00:55:42,600
Speaker 1: he has this reputation for being an early advocate of

975
00:55:42,640 --> 00:55:47,680
Speaker 1: something approaching scientific empiricism, the study of nature through observation

976
00:55:48,280 --> 00:55:51,719
Speaker 1: rather than just deductive principles about the divine order. Like

977
00:55:52,080 --> 00:55:55,040
Speaker 1: maybe you know what if Aristotle says something about nature

978
00:55:55,160 --> 00:55:58,000
Speaker 1: and then you do an experiment and discover that Aristotle

979
00:55:58,120 --> 00:56:00,399
Speaker 1: is wrong. I think a lot of people might had

980
00:56:00,400 --> 00:56:02,759
Speaker 1: the tendency to say like, well, you know you must

981
00:56:02,800 --> 00:56:08,120
Speaker 1: have done some throng aristotles probably right, aristotles above reproach right, yeah. Um.

982
00:56:08,360 --> 00:56:13,600
Speaker 1: So Bacon studied and wrote on language, on mathematics, on alchemy, astronomy,

983
00:56:13,640 --> 00:56:16,920
Speaker 1: and optics. You might remember in our Camera Obscura episode

984
00:56:16,960 --> 00:56:20,200
Speaker 1: of Invention we talked about how Bacon had read the

985
00:56:20,239 --> 00:56:24,640
Speaker 1: works of the eleventh century Arab scholar even al Haytham,

986
00:56:24,680 --> 00:56:27,920
Speaker 1: who described the principle of a pinhole camera for projecting

987
00:56:27,960 --> 00:56:31,400
Speaker 1: images into a dark room, and Bacon picked up on

988
00:56:31,480 --> 00:56:34,840
Speaker 1: this and conducted experiments based on al Heyatham's writings. He

989
00:56:34,880 --> 00:56:38,720
Speaker 1: apparently built or at least used a camera obscura chamber

990
00:56:38,760 --> 00:56:42,600
Speaker 1: for the purpose of safely observing solar eclipses in his lifetime.

991
00:56:43,239 --> 00:56:46,080
Speaker 1: But he also described the use of spectacles based on

992
00:56:46,160 --> 00:56:48,960
Speaker 1: glass lenses, which were not yet in wide use at

993
00:56:48,960 --> 00:56:52,759
Speaker 1: the time. Uh, He conducted alchemy experiments, and he speculated

994
00:56:52,800 --> 00:56:55,160
Speaker 1: on the idea of a flying machine. He kind of

995
00:56:55,200 --> 00:56:58,239
Speaker 1: had a reputation as something of a wonder worker or

996
00:56:58,239 --> 00:57:01,640
Speaker 1: a wizard. And again this is something that wasn't unheard

997
00:57:01,640 --> 00:57:04,560
Speaker 1: of for curious scholars of the medieval and early modern

998
00:57:04,640 --> 00:57:08,239
Speaker 1: period that the doctor Faustus kind of image Robert. You

999
00:57:08,320 --> 00:57:10,960
Speaker 1: might remember that one of the earliest theories on the

1000
00:57:11,000 --> 00:57:15,720
Speaker 1: authorship of the Voyage Manuscript attributes the manuscript to Roger Bacon,

1001
00:57:16,160 --> 00:57:18,720
Speaker 1: though I don't think we ever found any good evidence

1002
00:57:18,720 --> 00:57:21,640
Speaker 1: supporting this claim. It seemed more like people just might

1003
00:57:21,680 --> 00:57:24,120
Speaker 1: have thought, well, who's some messed up wizard who could

1004
00:57:24,160 --> 00:57:27,200
Speaker 1: have created this weird book. I think the dating of

1005
00:57:27,200 --> 00:57:30,760
Speaker 1: the actual materials put put the book as much later

1006
00:57:30,920 --> 00:57:34,160
Speaker 1: than than Bacon's life. Yeah, I think if you could

1007
00:57:34,160 --> 00:57:35,920
Speaker 1: make a better case for John Dee than you could

1008
00:57:35,960 --> 00:57:41,240
Speaker 1: for Bacon. Right, But Bacon really did apparently advocate experimentalism,

1009
00:57:41,240 --> 00:57:43,400
Speaker 1: though this doesn't mean he was the kind of like

1010
00:57:43,520 --> 00:57:47,640
Speaker 1: skeptic materialist naturalist you might imagine today. It seems he

1011
00:57:47,680 --> 00:57:52,120
Speaker 1: advocated an empirical or experimental approach to both natural science

1012
00:57:52,160 --> 00:57:55,040
Speaker 1: and alchemy and magic, which you know, I can see

1013
00:57:55,160 --> 00:57:57,400
Speaker 1: is that might have been a reasonable mindset if you

1014
00:57:57,440 --> 00:58:01,120
Speaker 1: were living in thirteenth century England. But anyway, he produced

1015
00:58:01,160 --> 00:58:05,680
Speaker 1: some important encyclopedias of learning, beginning with his Opus majis

1016
00:58:06,000 --> 00:58:09,640
Speaker 1: Uh and following with some other I think other works

1017
00:58:09,640 --> 00:58:13,320
Speaker 1: that were called like Opus Lesser or Opus Tertiary Uh

1018
00:58:13,320 --> 00:58:16,120
Speaker 1: so where does the gunpowder come in? Well, in the

1019
00:58:16,160 --> 00:58:19,160
Speaker 1: twelve forties and a couple of his major works, Bacon

1020
00:58:19,280 --> 00:58:22,680
Speaker 1: just straight up described a recipe for making gunpowder as

1021
00:58:22,720 --> 00:58:24,840
Speaker 1: seemingly out of nowhere. So I'm going to sign a

1022
00:58:24,880 --> 00:58:28,960
Speaker 1: passage from the scholar Joseph Needham's work on Bacon and

1023
00:58:29,040 --> 00:58:31,880
Speaker 1: gunpowder in in a in a book called Science and

1024
00:58:31,920 --> 00:58:36,760
Speaker 1: Civilization in China from Cambridge University Press, nine seven, where

1025
00:58:36,800 --> 00:58:41,240
Speaker 1: he combines a couple of nearly identical passages about gunpowder

1026
00:58:41,320 --> 00:58:46,600
Speaker 1: from Bacon's Opus Majis and or Mayis and Opus Tertium together.

1027
00:58:46,680 --> 00:58:50,160
Speaker 1: But first we should look at how Bacon introduces this section,

1028
00:58:50,600 --> 00:58:53,880
Speaker 1: which is uh, he talks about Greek fire. He writes,

1029
00:58:54,520 --> 00:58:57,960
Speaker 1: certain of these work by contact only, and so destroy

1030
00:58:58,120 --> 00:59:01,400
Speaker 1: life malta or now up the which is a kind

1031
00:59:01,440 --> 00:59:05,000
Speaker 1: of bitumen plentiful in the world, when projected upon a

1032
00:59:05,080 --> 00:59:09,840
Speaker 1: man in armor, burns him up. Similarly, yellow petroleum i e.

1033
00:59:10,120 --> 00:59:13,960
Speaker 1: Oil produced from the rocks, when properly prepared or distilled,

1034
00:59:14,600 --> 00:59:18,440
Speaker 1: burns everything it meets by a consuming fire, not extinguishable

1035
00:59:18,480 --> 00:59:21,960
Speaker 1: by water, and only with great difficulty by other things.

1036
00:59:22,560 --> 00:59:26,080
Speaker 1: Certain inventions disturb the hearing to such a degree that

1037
00:59:26,160 --> 00:59:28,920
Speaker 1: if they are set off suddenly at night with sufficient skill,

1038
00:59:29,360 --> 00:59:33,480
Speaker 1: neither cities nor armies can endure them. No thunderclap can

1039
00:59:33,520 --> 00:59:38,200
Speaker 1: compare with such terrifying noises, nor lightning playing among the clouds,

1040
00:59:38,240 --> 00:59:42,720
Speaker 1: with such frightening flashes. And then um, and then he

1041
00:59:42,720 --> 00:59:45,720
Speaker 1: goes on. So this is the combined two passages about

1042
00:59:45,760 --> 00:59:49,880
Speaker 1: gunpowder itself. We have an example of these things that

1043
00:59:50,000 --> 00:59:53,080
Speaker 1: act on the senses in the sound and fire of

1044
00:59:53,120 --> 00:59:56,840
Speaker 1: that children's toy which is made in many diverse parts

1045
00:59:56,840 --> 00:59:59,800
Speaker 1: of the world, i e. A device no bigger than

1046
01:00:00,280 --> 01:00:04,760
Speaker 1: thumb from the violence of that salt called saltpeter, together

1047
01:00:04,800 --> 01:00:09,400
Speaker 1: with sulfur and willow charcoal combined into a powder. So

1048
01:00:09,520 --> 01:00:12,000
Speaker 1: horrible a sound is made by the bursting of a

1049
01:00:12,080 --> 01:00:15,360
Speaker 1: thing so small, no more than a bit of parchment

1050
01:00:15,440 --> 01:00:18,840
Speaker 1: containing it, that we find the ear assaulted by a

1051
01:00:18,920 --> 01:00:22,640
Speaker 1: noise exceeding the roar of strong thunder, and a flash

1052
01:00:22,720 --> 01:00:26,240
Speaker 1: brighter than the most brilliant lightning, especially if one has

1053
01:00:26,280 --> 01:00:30,480
Speaker 1: taken unawares. This terrible flash is very alarming. If an

1054
01:00:30,520 --> 01:00:34,120
Speaker 1: instrument of large size were used, no one could withstand

1055
01:00:34,160 --> 01:00:37,280
Speaker 1: the noise and blinding light. And if the instrument were

1056
01:00:37,280 --> 01:00:40,840
Speaker 1: made of solid material, the violence of the explosion would

1057
01:00:40,880 --> 01:00:43,600
Speaker 1: be much greater. I love this. There are aspects of

1058
01:00:43,640 --> 01:00:46,480
Speaker 1: it. It It maybe sound like an overstatement of the power

1059
01:00:46,680 --> 01:00:50,000
Speaker 1: of a simple firework, but he does get at the

1060
01:00:50,000 --> 01:00:52,160
Speaker 1: heart of it here. Well. Yeah, so this This is

1061
01:00:52,560 --> 01:00:55,360
Speaker 1: Bacon in this work in the middle of the thirteenth century,

1062
01:00:55,760 --> 01:01:00,000
Speaker 1: describing a totally accurate recipe for making an explosive charge. Remember,

1063
01:01:00,040 --> 01:01:02,040
Speaker 1: he's got all of the ingredients we talked about in

1064
01:01:02,040 --> 01:01:05,280
Speaker 1: the chemistry section earlier. He's got the fuel there, he's

1065
01:01:05,280 --> 01:01:08,640
Speaker 1: got the sulfur, he's got the saltpeter as the oxidizer.

1066
01:01:08,680 --> 01:01:10,720
Speaker 1: He says. You grind them together, you make a powder

1067
01:01:10,720 --> 01:01:12,920
Speaker 1: out of them, and that's how you get this charge.

1068
01:01:12,960 --> 01:01:15,080
Speaker 1: And then of course you pack it into to a

1069
01:01:15,160 --> 01:01:18,240
Speaker 1: roll of parchment, he says, which parchment, being a rather

1070
01:01:18,280 --> 01:01:21,240
Speaker 1: expensive material, also seems like maybe not a great use

1071
01:01:21,280 --> 01:01:23,080
Speaker 1: for it. But I don't know what else would you

1072
01:01:23,160 --> 01:01:25,880
Speaker 1: use at the time, I guess, but he describes it

1073
01:01:25,920 --> 01:01:29,920
Speaker 1: as some kind of pre existing children's toy, without saying

1074
01:01:30,000 --> 01:01:33,160
Speaker 1: where or when this toy would have been observed, and

1075
01:01:33,440 --> 01:01:37,640
Speaker 1: ends with the unmistakable observation that this combustible powder could

1076
01:01:37,680 --> 01:01:40,920
Speaker 1: obviously be used for violence could be used in warfare.

1077
01:01:42,240 --> 01:01:44,720
Speaker 1: So a lot of historians claim that this is the

1078
01:01:44,760 --> 01:01:48,560
Speaker 1: first time knowledge of black powder is acknowledged anywhere in Europe.

1079
01:01:49,280 --> 01:01:52,040
Speaker 1: But where did Bacon get this idea from? He doesn't

1080
01:01:52,120 --> 01:01:54,520
Speaker 1: claim to have come up with it himself. Instead, he

1081
01:01:54,560 --> 01:01:57,680
Speaker 1: speaks of this toy from other parts of the world

1082
01:01:57,760 --> 01:02:01,160
Speaker 1: without saying where. So there's an interesting question of cross

1083
01:02:01,200 --> 01:02:05,200
Speaker 1: fertilization of ideas here. Uh Needham Joseph Needham, in his

1084
01:02:05,280 --> 01:02:08,880
Speaker 1: book argues that there is ample reason for thinking that

1085
01:02:09,080 --> 01:02:13,320
Speaker 1: Chinese firecrackers and general explosive chemistry would have made their

1086
01:02:13,360 --> 01:02:16,240
Speaker 1: way back to Europe by around the time Bacon was

1087
01:02:16,280 --> 01:02:21,000
Speaker 1: writing uh So Needham rights quote. This description inescapably suggests

1088
01:02:21,040 --> 01:02:24,040
Speaker 1: to us that a sample of Chinese crackers had come

1089
01:02:24,040 --> 01:02:27,280
Speaker 1: into Roger Bacon's possession and that he knew what the

1090
01:02:27,320 --> 01:02:32,040
Speaker 1: constituents of the mixture were inside them by twelve sixty seven.

1091
01:02:32,080 --> 01:02:35,520
Speaker 1: That would have been perfectly possible for his fellow friars

1092
01:02:35,520 --> 01:02:38,840
Speaker 1: had been traveling back and forth between Western Europe and

1093
01:02:38,880 --> 01:02:42,560
Speaker 1: the Mongol court at Kara Koran since twelve forty five,

1094
01:02:42,720 --> 01:02:46,560
Speaker 1: when the Franciscan John of Plano Caprini had been sent

1095
01:02:46,640 --> 01:02:49,840
Speaker 1: as an envoy from Innocent the Fourth, that's Pope Innocent

1096
01:02:49,880 --> 01:02:53,120
Speaker 1: the Fourth to the Great Khan Uh. And then he

1097
01:02:53,120 --> 01:02:57,840
Speaker 1: he documents plenty of other recorded instances of of Franciscans

1098
01:02:57,880 --> 01:03:01,480
Speaker 1: and Dominicans and other Europeans travel back and forth to

1099
01:03:01,680 --> 01:03:05,080
Speaker 1: China to the Mongol court, and says that there's just

1100
01:03:05,200 --> 01:03:09,600
Speaker 1: really no problem imagining that someone maybe maybe knowing of

1101
01:03:09,960 --> 01:03:12,120
Speaker 1: Roger Bacon and saying, hey, he's this kind of like

1102
01:03:12,880 --> 01:03:15,760
Speaker 1: out there wizard guy. He he would enjoy a chemical

1103
01:03:15,840 --> 01:03:18,200
Speaker 1: curiosity from the other side of the world. Let's bring

1104
01:03:18,280 --> 01:03:22,040
Speaker 1: some firecrackers back for for doctor Wonderful to look at. Yeah,

1105
01:03:22,080 --> 01:03:24,680
Speaker 1: now this would make perfect sense. Everything lines lines up here, uh,

1106
01:03:25,280 --> 01:03:29,080
Speaker 1: the Chinese to the Mongols and then via these uh,

1107
01:03:29,200 --> 01:03:33,800
Speaker 1: these these traveling um uh clergyman back to Europe. But

1108
01:03:33,960 --> 01:03:37,560
Speaker 1: I would say it also seems possible that firecracker chemistry

1109
01:03:37,600 --> 01:03:40,200
Speaker 1: could have entered late medieval Europe through the Arab world,

1110
01:03:40,320 --> 01:03:42,720
Speaker 1: which was a conduit for a lot of scientific and

1111
01:03:42,760 --> 01:03:46,560
Speaker 1: technological knowledge from both farther East stand from the Arab

1112
01:03:46,560 --> 01:03:49,480
Speaker 1: world itself, but also from the lost libraries of antiquity

1113
01:03:49,520 --> 01:03:51,280
Speaker 1: that you know, a lot of knowledge came back into

1114
01:03:51,320 --> 01:03:53,600
Speaker 1: Europe that way. Yeah, And I think that's also where

1115
01:03:53,600 --> 01:03:56,400
Speaker 1: we see more of a direct military stream of ideas

1116
01:03:57,320 --> 01:04:01,560
Speaker 1: from China than down through UH through a Central Asia

1117
01:04:01,800 --> 01:04:05,160
Speaker 1: and UH and into the Middle East. And this instance

1118
01:04:05,240 --> 01:04:08,200
Speaker 1: of of Bacon making this first record of of a

1119
01:04:08,280 --> 01:04:11,760
Speaker 1: recipe for gunpowder in Europe is interesting and how it

1120
01:04:12,000 --> 01:04:14,720
Speaker 1: uh feeds into how we should think about the role

1121
01:04:14,760 --> 01:04:17,640
Speaker 1: of Roger Bacon in in the history of science and stuff,

1122
01:04:17,640 --> 01:04:21,960
Speaker 1: because despite his reputation for experimentation, which he did of

1123
01:04:21,960 --> 01:04:26,040
Speaker 1: course support in principle, Bacon's actual legacy in the history

1124
01:04:26,040 --> 01:04:29,720
Speaker 1: of knowledge might just as well be understood as one

1125
01:04:29,760 --> 01:04:34,240
Speaker 1: of voraciousness for sources of learning far and wide as

1126
01:04:34,320 --> 01:04:37,200
Speaker 1: much as it was for actual experimentation. I mean, again,

1127
01:04:38,040 --> 01:04:41,200
Speaker 1: the idea is not that Bacon was doing chemistry experiments

1128
01:04:41,200 --> 01:04:45,640
Speaker 1: and discovered how to make gunpowder. He probably got a

1129
01:04:45,680 --> 01:04:49,640
Speaker 1: firecracker from somewhere that had been made based on Chinese

1130
01:04:49,720 --> 01:04:53,600
Speaker 1: technology and then either was told or figured out how

1131
01:04:53,640 --> 01:04:56,360
Speaker 1: it worked. But that's a very important role in the

1132
01:04:56,400 --> 01:04:58,520
Speaker 1: history of knowledge as well. Just being like a great

1133
01:04:58,600 --> 01:05:01,960
Speaker 1: collector of ideas for anywhere you can get them, that's right,

1134
01:05:02,000 --> 01:05:05,680
Speaker 1: Just simply being exceedingly well read in the time where

1135
01:05:05,720 --> 01:05:10,240
Speaker 1: where relatively few individuals were in the grand scheme of things, right,

1136
01:05:10,720 --> 01:05:15,040
Speaker 1: So what came of Bacon's publishing on the subject of gunpowder. Well,

1137
01:05:15,400 --> 01:05:18,960
Speaker 1: some sources alleged that later in his life Roger Bacon

1138
01:05:19,600 --> 01:05:23,160
Speaker 1: suffered trouble of the roughly inquisitional sort, that he was

1139
01:05:23,320 --> 01:05:27,000
Speaker 1: imprisoned in the late twelve seventies by his brothers in

1140
01:05:27,040 --> 01:05:30,040
Speaker 1: the Franciscan Order. From what I can tell, the earliest

1141
01:05:30,120 --> 01:05:32,760
Speaker 1: record of this imprisonment comes from a work published in

1142
01:05:32,840 --> 01:05:35,400
Speaker 1: the thirteen seventies, so this would have been around a

1143
01:05:35,480 --> 01:05:39,360
Speaker 1: hundred years after the supposed events, called Chronicle of the

1144
01:05:39,400 --> 01:05:43,160
Speaker 1: twenty four Ministers General of the Franciscan's. So I think

1145
01:05:43,160 --> 01:05:47,440
Speaker 1: it's not a hundred percent clear that Bacon really was jailed.

1146
01:05:47,720 --> 01:05:51,440
Speaker 1: We don't have an autobiographical account or anything, but it

1147
01:05:51,640 --> 01:05:54,840
Speaker 1: is widely alleged, and if he was in fact thrown

1148
01:05:54,840 --> 01:05:58,600
Speaker 1: into prison, the exact cause of this imprisonment is not clear.

1149
01:05:58,760 --> 01:06:01,680
Speaker 1: I've seen it alleged interials by the Royal Society of

1150
01:06:01,760 --> 01:06:06,280
Speaker 1: Chemistry in the UK that Bacon's description of and possible

1151
01:06:06,280 --> 01:06:09,640
Speaker 1: experiments with gunpowder were what got him into trouble with

1152
01:06:09,680 --> 01:06:13,600
Speaker 1: the church. Since quote only God could produce thunder and lightning.

1153
01:06:14,280 --> 01:06:17,439
Speaker 1: But but I haven't really found any evidence that looks

1154
01:06:17,560 --> 01:06:21,800
Speaker 1: very good for this specific technological blasphemy being the cause

1155
01:06:21,840 --> 01:06:25,560
Speaker 1: of his imprisonment. Apparently the historical record is vague. We're

1156
01:06:25,560 --> 01:06:28,760
Speaker 1: told that it was due to something simply translated as

1157
01:06:28,960 --> 01:06:33,360
Speaker 1: suspected novelties in his teachings, And I guess it's not

1158
01:06:33,440 --> 01:06:36,560
Speaker 1: out of the question that this could refer to technology

1159
01:06:36,680 --> 01:06:39,760
Speaker 1: or something like gunpowder, But it could also just refer

1160
01:06:39,840 --> 01:06:42,680
Speaker 1: to heretical religious beliefs having to do with the end

1161
01:06:42,680 --> 01:06:46,080
Speaker 1: of the world and uh, the church modeling itself on

1162
01:06:46,200 --> 01:06:48,960
Speaker 1: the the idea of the poverty of Christ. Or it

1163
01:06:49,000 --> 01:06:53,160
Speaker 1: could have to do with reliance on contemporary prophecies or astrology.

1164
01:06:53,600 --> 01:06:55,120
Speaker 1: Just seems like there are a lot of things you

1165
01:06:55,120 --> 01:06:57,040
Speaker 1: could get in trouble, a lot of kinds of thought

1166
01:06:57,080 --> 01:06:59,800
Speaker 1: crime at the time, and it doesn't necessarily need to

1167
01:06:59,840 --> 01:07:02,760
Speaker 1: be gunpowder that got him into trouble, right, Yeah, there

1168
01:07:02,800 --> 01:07:07,680
Speaker 1: there there's so many other established paths to alleged heresy

1169
01:07:08,160 --> 01:07:11,160
Speaker 1: without having to draw a new line to gunpowder here.

1170
01:07:11,400 --> 01:07:13,840
Speaker 1: But but of course it wasn't long after Bacon's writings

1171
01:07:13,840 --> 01:07:17,480
Speaker 1: that you really start to see for example, firearm technology

1172
01:07:17,640 --> 01:07:21,200
Speaker 1: being experimented within Europe, so so that this was sort

1173
01:07:21,240 --> 01:07:24,480
Speaker 1: of a a germanal point in the transfer of knowledge

1174
01:07:24,520 --> 01:07:27,160
Speaker 1: about gunpowder to Europe. And then, of course we've already

1175
01:07:27,200 --> 01:07:31,000
Speaker 1: talked about all the ways that recreational fireworks became popular

1176
01:07:31,040 --> 01:07:35,440
Speaker 1: in the following centuries. It's interesting again we come back

1177
01:07:35,440 --> 01:07:38,000
Speaker 1: to this idea of gunpowder as being one of these

1178
01:07:38,000 --> 01:07:39,720
Speaker 1: prime inventions. We can look at it and and we can

1179
01:07:39,760 --> 01:07:42,960
Speaker 1: see like the way it is used to harm other people,

1180
01:07:43,000 --> 01:07:45,680
Speaker 1: in the way it is used as pure amusement, the

1181
01:07:45,720 --> 01:07:49,160
Speaker 1: dual nature of of invention. Right. But then also we're

1182
01:07:49,240 --> 01:07:52,840
Speaker 1: we're talking about how it travels, and so it seems

1183
01:07:52,920 --> 01:07:55,120
Speaker 1: entirely possible that we're looking in the situation where it

1184
01:07:55,200 --> 01:07:58,920
Speaker 1: is via novelty that the technology more readily travels to

1185
01:07:59,000 --> 01:08:02,040
Speaker 1: the West. Uh, for a number of reasons, one of

1186
01:08:02,080 --> 01:08:04,160
Speaker 1: which being that, uh, you know, a culture is going

1187
01:08:04,240 --> 01:08:07,200
Speaker 1: to be far less willing to share the secrets of

1188
01:08:07,240 --> 01:08:11,600
Speaker 1: its weaponry. Um, but in terms of its mere enjoyments, Uh,

1189
01:08:11,880 --> 01:08:14,880
Speaker 1: that that that may travel a little easier. Yeah, I

1190
01:08:14,920 --> 01:08:17,719
Speaker 1: can totally see that. Uh. You know something that's interesting.

1191
01:08:17,760 --> 01:08:20,959
Speaker 1: I was reading about fireworks in the contemporary world Obviously,

1192
01:08:21,000 --> 01:08:23,720
Speaker 1: we know that in the United States people tend to

1193
01:08:23,800 --> 01:08:27,320
Speaker 1: use a lot of firecrackers and fireworks around the Independence Day,

1194
01:08:27,320 --> 01:08:30,519
Speaker 1: the fourth of July. But I was reading that even today,

1195
01:08:30,560 --> 01:08:33,920
Speaker 1: the vast majority of the world's fireworks are still made

1196
01:08:33,920 --> 01:08:36,479
Speaker 1: in China. I was reading an article on CNN that

1197
01:08:36,560 --> 01:08:41,120
Speaker 1: reported that as of twenty sixteen, over nine percent of

1198
01:08:41,160 --> 01:08:45,719
Speaker 1: the fireworks used on American Independence Day were manufactured in China.

1199
01:08:45,800 --> 01:08:49,040
Speaker 1: And there's still all kinds of artisans and crafts people

1200
01:08:49,120 --> 01:08:52,800
Speaker 1: working in China that like hand make fireworks. That that

1201
01:08:52,920 --> 01:08:56,120
Speaker 1: is impressive to think about that because generally, when I

1202
01:08:56,160 --> 01:08:59,719
Speaker 1: think of fireworks, I think of the seemingly mass produced

1203
01:08:59,720 --> 01:09:02,840
Speaker 1: exam amples that that one finds that fireworks stores and

1204
01:09:02,880 --> 01:09:06,080
Speaker 1: firework tents, right, Yeah, and I'm sure, I'm sure some

1205
01:09:06,160 --> 01:09:09,680
Speaker 1: fireworks are mass produced by a more automated process. But uh,

1206
01:09:10,120 --> 01:09:13,120
Speaker 1: but yeah, I was watching some short documentary segments about

1207
01:09:13,160 --> 01:09:16,760
Speaker 1: actually like companies that still just have basically people making

1208
01:09:16,800 --> 01:09:21,519
Speaker 1: them by hand using sort of hand cranked machinery and stuff. Yeah,

1209
01:09:21,720 --> 01:09:24,439
Speaker 1: you certainly don't see any here in the States at

1210
01:09:24,439 --> 01:09:27,640
Speaker 1: farmers markets where someone is like, these are my fireworks.

1211
01:09:27,680 --> 01:09:29,960
Speaker 1: I made these, you can watch me make them. I

1212
01:09:30,040 --> 01:09:34,400
Speaker 1: roll my own Roman candles, etcetera. But maybe I'm just

1213
01:09:34,400 --> 01:09:36,599
Speaker 1: going to the wrong farmers markets. Who knows. No, this

1214
01:09:36,640 --> 01:09:38,720
Speaker 1: is an interesting point you raise. Rachel and I were

1215
01:09:38,720 --> 01:09:40,639
Speaker 1: actually talking about this here at the house, about whether

1216
01:09:41,439 --> 01:09:44,880
Speaker 1: you know you would have like craft fireworks in the

1217
01:09:44,920 --> 01:09:47,280
Speaker 1: same way you see, I don't know so much of

1218
01:09:47,320 --> 01:09:51,320
Speaker 1: an artisanal craft movement with other types of products and

1219
01:09:51,400 --> 01:09:54,599
Speaker 1: food items these days. Yeah, and and would you would

1220
01:09:54,640 --> 01:09:56,680
Speaker 1: one trust that more or less? I feel like my

1221
01:09:56,760 --> 01:10:00,240
Speaker 1: instinct and maybe this is by virtue of of just

1222
01:10:00,280 --> 01:10:03,160
Speaker 1: not being um accustomed to it, I feel like I

1223
01:10:03,160 --> 01:10:07,080
Speaker 1: would be suspicious of of handmade fireworks that just some

1224
01:10:07,280 --> 01:10:11,439
Speaker 1: random stranger made um, I don't know. And maybe again

1225
01:10:11,479 --> 01:10:14,240
Speaker 1: just because it's something I've I've not encountered before. Personally,

1226
01:10:15,920 --> 01:10:17,639
Speaker 1: I guess it's I want there to be some sort

1227
01:10:17,640 --> 01:10:20,599
Speaker 1: of like factory standard for my explosives. I guess right.

1228
01:10:20,640 --> 01:10:22,040
Speaker 1: You want to You want to know that it's been

1229
01:10:22,040 --> 01:10:25,479
Speaker 1: through the inspections or something. Yeah. Isn't it weird that

1230
01:10:25,520 --> 01:10:28,439
Speaker 1: our intuitions sometimes work that way? You think, like a

1231
01:10:28,760 --> 01:10:33,040
Speaker 1: mass produced item, that that seems safer, that seems like, uh,

1232
01:10:33,240 --> 01:10:36,080
Speaker 1: that seems like it's been through a process. I would

1233
01:10:36,120 --> 01:10:38,920
Speaker 1: love to hear from anyone out there who makes their

1234
01:10:38,960 --> 01:10:42,439
Speaker 1: own fireworks or know someone who does, for any insight

1235
01:10:42,479 --> 01:10:45,400
Speaker 1: into this, because just I haven't researched this in full,

1236
01:10:45,479 --> 01:10:49,080
Speaker 1: but just glancing around, it looks like there are advocates

1237
01:10:49,120 --> 01:10:52,960
Speaker 1: out there for making your own fireworks and uh and

1238
01:10:52,960 --> 01:10:56,200
Speaker 1: and even doing so safely. Um, but this is just

1239
01:10:56,240 --> 01:10:59,240
Speaker 1: a whole world I have no exposure to. Well, quick

1240
01:10:59,280 --> 01:11:02,639
Speaker 1: liability show. We're not advising people to do that. No, no,

1241
01:11:03,000 --> 01:11:05,560
Speaker 1: we are not advising you to make your own fireworks.

1242
01:11:06,360 --> 01:11:08,840
Speaker 1: Just if you are, if you already have knowledge of

1243
01:11:08,880 --> 01:11:11,360
Speaker 1: this world, let us know about it. I would like

1244
01:11:11,439 --> 01:11:14,479
Speaker 1: to learn more. I would not like to to buy

1245
01:11:14,520 --> 01:11:16,320
Speaker 1: any of them, though. You know what I want to

1246
01:11:16,320 --> 01:11:19,280
Speaker 1: know from an expert on fireworks is whether pump stars

1247
01:11:19,360 --> 01:11:21,679
Speaker 1: or stars that have been pumped using a star pump

1248
01:11:21,760 --> 01:11:23,519
Speaker 1: or not? Yeah? And then how do you make the

1249
01:11:23,560 --> 01:11:26,280
Speaker 1: star pump? Do you have to? Is there something like

1250
01:11:26,360 --> 01:11:29,080
Speaker 1: you made from like residue from pumping a star? I

1251
01:11:29,120 --> 01:11:33,120
Speaker 1: don't know. Could all be interconnected? The star pump sounds

1252
01:11:33,120 --> 01:11:36,720
Speaker 1: like a wonderful science fiction device. It does. Yeah, some

1253
01:11:36,800 --> 01:11:41,960
Speaker 1: sort of crazy Kardashiev level two technology bust about the

1254
01:11:42,000 --> 01:11:46,080
Speaker 1: star Pump. But anyway, uh, that is it for fireworks

1255
01:11:46,400 --> 01:11:49,599
Speaker 1: for this episode. Hopefully we you know, provided some additional

1256
01:11:49,640 --> 01:11:53,920
Speaker 1: insight into the the the origin of fireworks and how

1257
01:11:54,200 --> 01:11:58,040
Speaker 1: this technology then took off in Western Europe as well.

1258
01:11:58,640 --> 01:12:00,479
Speaker 1: So a little more to think about than if you

1259
01:12:00,520 --> 01:12:03,439
Speaker 1: find yourself staring up at the sky in the next

1260
01:12:04,040 --> 01:12:06,519
Speaker 1: few months, in the next some type point over the

1261
01:12:06,560 --> 01:12:11,920
Speaker 1: next year and watching these various colorful, glittering explosions take place, uh,

1262
01:12:11,960 --> 01:12:15,040
Speaker 1: you know, understanding what what is chemically going on and

1263
01:12:15,120 --> 01:12:18,760
Speaker 1: also what is uh culturally and historically going on before you.

1264
01:12:19,360 --> 01:12:20,920
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you would like to check out

1265
01:12:20,960 --> 01:12:22,640
Speaker 1: other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you can

1266
01:12:22,680 --> 01:12:25,640
Speaker 1: find us wherever you get your podcasts and wherever that

1267
01:12:25,680 --> 01:12:29,600
Speaker 1: happens to be. You can help us out by rating, reviewing,

1268
01:12:29,680 --> 01:12:33,280
Speaker 1: and subscribing. Uh those are the three acts of kindness

1269
01:12:33,320 --> 01:12:35,040
Speaker 1: you can do to help out the show. But also

1270
01:12:35,360 --> 01:12:38,280
Speaker 1: just tell other human beings about us next time you

1271
01:12:38,280 --> 01:12:40,920
Speaker 1: need to recommend a podcast, uh, you know, maybe mentioned

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Speaker 1: an episode of Stuff to Blow your Mind that to

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Speaker 1: couch your fancy. That's right, b our Star Pumps anyway,

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Speaker 1: huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth

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Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch

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Speaker 1: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,

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Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to

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Speaker 1: say hi, you can mail us at contact. That's Stuff

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Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your

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Speaker 1: Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts

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Speaker 1: for My heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,

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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listening to your favorite shows.