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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today is Saturday,

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Speaker 1: so it's time to go into the old vault. This

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Speaker 1: episode originally published on June and it's about the invention

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Speaker 1: of fireworks. Yeah, yeah, this is this is ideal since

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Speaker 1: tomorrow in the United States it's July four, a time

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Speaker 1: when there are traditionally fireworks going off in the sky.

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Speaker 1: So here, let's enjoy. Let's explore the history and the

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Speaker 1: origin of fireworks. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind,

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Speaker 1: production of My Heart Radio. Hey are you welcome to

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb

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Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're doing fireworks. Robert, did,

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Speaker 1: did you grow up in a place where, whatever the

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Speaker 1: actual law, as you at least thought that fireworks were

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Speaker 1: illegal and that setting them off in your yard might

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Speaker 1: summon the police. No. I I grew up in places

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Speaker 1: where it seemed that fireworks were just part of life,

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Speaker 1: and you could just go out and play with a

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Speaker 1: bunch of firecrackers in the afternoon by yourself, and it

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Speaker 1: wasn't any big deal, you know, strap them to g

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Speaker 1: I Joe there in um build little volcanoes out of

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Speaker 1: dirt and then blow them up to get some scotch

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Speaker 1: tape and see how many um what bottle rockets you

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Speaker 1: could uh lash together and still achieve something that would

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Speaker 1: fly through the air. That sort of thing. So definitely,

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Speaker 1: when I was a little kid, I had the impression

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Speaker 1: that using fireworks was illegal. I don't know if it was,

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Speaker 1: but I think that's because you couldn't buy them in

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Speaker 1: the county where I lived. So when Fourth of July

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Speaker 1: or New Year's or whatever was coming up and we

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Speaker 1: wanted to get fireworks, we had to go on a

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Speaker 1: road trip up or down the interstate to one of

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Speaker 1: the more lawless evil counties where you could go to

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Speaker 1: Big Daddy's Firecrackers, or you know, one of these other places.

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Speaker 1: I remember when I was a kid one time buying

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Speaker 1: a you know, using my little allowance money to buy

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Speaker 1: a firecracker that was very exciting looking because it was

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Speaker 1: shaped like a tank. It was made of cardboard, and

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Speaker 1: I thought, now this thing is going to be like

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Speaker 1: a piece of mobile artillery. It's going to roll around

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Speaker 1: and shootout stuff. I recall, it didn't really do much

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Speaker 1: and It was one of my earliest experiences of spending

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Speaker 1: money on something expecting it to be great and it

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Speaker 1: being a total flop. I remember being really impressed with

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Speaker 1: like the tanks and the little sort of novelty items

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Speaker 1: because basically we when Fourth of July or New Years

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Speaker 1: would roll around, they'd set up a tenant for a

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Speaker 1: couple of tenants in town in the place where I

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Speaker 1: grew up, and and you know, they would sell the

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Speaker 1: fireworks there. I always wanted to get things like the tank,

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Speaker 1: but generally a parental or grown up uh unit that

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Speaker 1: was president would would say, no, no, no no, that's that's

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Speaker 1: a waste of money. You want something that goes up

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Speaker 1: in the air and blows up my my fond its memory.

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Speaker 1: I remember, I think my grandparents got this. One was

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

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Speaker 1: out of it, Like yeah, man, and that was that

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

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Speaker 1: 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 up Yeah, I guess, um, But then I also

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Speaker 1: remember being really impressed by the ones that looked like

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Speaker 1: actual rockets. The more rockety, the better, right, And I

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Speaker 1: distinctly remember talking my my parents into getting this this

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Speaker 1: one rocket and then we we we brought it home,

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Speaker 1: and as it turned out, one of the problems with

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Speaker 1: this particular rocket is it's supposed to have a launching rod,

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Speaker 1: you know, like a rod that sticks into the ground

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Speaker 1: that ensures that it takes off in a you know,

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Speaker 1: a with a straight skyward trajectory. That rod had been

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Speaker 1: misplaced prior to purchase, so it did not have one.

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Speaker 1: So we set this thing off and it instead of

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

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

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Speaker 1: a a a narrow gap in the sliding glass door

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Speaker 1: of our house, and it hit my uncle in the face.

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Speaker 1: Fortunately didn't like blow up in his face or anything,

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Speaker 1: but like, you know, kind of puncture his cheek a

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Speaker 1: little bit, and then like skittered around on the carpeted

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Speaker 1: floor shooting sparks everywhere. Uh so that was exciting. Did

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Speaker 1: you get to keep playing with fireworks after that? Uh? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I guess it did inspire me to be a little

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Speaker 1: maybe it was a little more careful after that, and

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Speaker 1: I certainly didn't get into the total recklessness of you know,

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Speaker 1: people launching roman candles at each other, that sort of

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Speaker 1: thing that you hear about. I was generally it was about, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you hear about or her horror stories about but or

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Speaker 1: that your friends did in high school. Yeah, for me,

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Speaker 1: it was just firecrackers and bottle rockets, so you know,

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

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Speaker 1: cherry moms and so forth. I have personal stories about

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: 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 only vaguely remember seeing these.

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Speaker 1: I 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, and

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Speaker 1: neither one's going to give off heat the way that

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Speaker 1: it 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 you 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 episodes.

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Speaker 1: Are an exploration of the origin of fireworks, which is

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: be discussing here. But even just the Chinese origins of fireworks,

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: there is a lot of magic and mystery there as well. Totally,

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Speaker 1: So we're not going to run through the entire history

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Speaker 1: of pyrotechnology here, but suffice to say that the human

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Speaker 1: ability to manipulate, sustain, control, and produce fire is key

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Speaker 1: to technological advancement as a whole. I mean, it's just

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Speaker 1: difficult to overstate the importance of fire mastery in human history.

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Speaker 1: It's not just key, it's the master key. It's the

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Speaker 1: thing that unlocks almost everything else. Again, there's a reason

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Speaker 1: that broadly historical technological regimes are characterized in terms of

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Speaker 1: metal working, like what types of things you could make

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Speaker 1: tools out of, And you couldn't really have metal working

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Speaker 1: without fire, That's right. If you want a more detailed

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Speaker 1: breakdown of sort of like the basic fire technology history

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Speaker 1: of humanity, check out our what was it? A three

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Speaker 1: part series we did on the match stick for invention?

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Speaker 1: Our our other show which has now been folded back

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Speaker 1: into this show, but all those episodes about the match

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Speaker 1: stick are still available for your listening. Yeah, 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 could 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. Yeah, we can't stop

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Speaker 1: thinking 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 Ascid 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 campfire itself, the

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

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Speaker 1: itself an ancient laboratory, a place where humans experimented with

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Speaker 1: the addition of various fuels and substances to learn what burns,

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Speaker 1: what doesn't burn, and sometimes what burns really well or

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Speaker 1: what combusts. You know, I didn't think of this until

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Speaker 1: just now, but this is also bringing to mind the

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Speaker 1: recent episodes we did about buildings made out of mammoth

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Speaker 1: bone that we're found in what is now Russia and Ukraine.

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Speaker 1: But in this ancient Ice Age culture, and a big

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Speaker 1: part of that culture seemed to be based around the

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Speaker 1: burning of bones as fuel, something we wouldn't even normally

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Speaker 1: think of as possible. Yeah, exactly, Like bones are one

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Speaker 1: example of of a of a combustion uh source that

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Speaker 1: that has played an important role in human history. Another one,

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Speaker 1: of course, is dung um. Some some listeners, particularly some cultures,

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Speaker 1: may not be aware of just how important dung has

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Speaker 1: been and still is in many cases as a fuel.

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Speaker 1: You know, you can almost still feel the instinct in yourself,

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Speaker 1: or at least I can. Whenever you are sitting around

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Speaker 1: to fire and you have some kind of novel item,

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Speaker 1: there's almost this primordial urge to just see what it's

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Speaker 1: like if you just throw that in the fire. What

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Speaker 1: does it 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, well, let's get some sticks to brace

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Speaker 1: these suckers, and then we realize, oh, no, the last

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Speaker 1: time we had a fire in the backyard, the boy

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Speaker 1: burned everything, 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 that, if at all possible, dry bamboo can

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: the 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 hermendous

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

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

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Speaker 1: this 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 this 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: amusement to be had in burning it in the fire.

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Speaker 1: So it would it would seem impossible to truly date

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Speaker 1: how far back this practice goes of observing that bamboo

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Speaker 1: pops in the fire. But given the necessary components, you know,

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Speaker 1: and the obvious lack of archaeological evidence, we have to

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Speaker 1: consider that it goes like pretty much all the way

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Speaker 1: back in UH, as far as there have been peoples

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Speaker 1: around bamboo that are capable of producing fire, and in

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Speaker 1: Chinese history, we at least can consider it as long

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Speaker 1: as we've had Chinese writing and UH, and that is

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

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Speaker 1: this was an established thing. So I was reading some

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Speaker 1: writings by um Hiwang Yuan of Western Kentucky University where

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Speaker 1: he's a professor of library science, but he's also a

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Speaker 1: guest professor of the Foreign Languages College at Nankai University

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Speaker 1: in China, and he's written several books on Chinese proverbs

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Speaker 1: and legends. In two thousand eight, he wrote a piece

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Speaker 1: on Chinese fireworks, and he points out, uh that what

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Speaker 1: we're talking about here is bao jou, which is exploding bamboo,

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Speaker 1: like that's the word for it, and it later becomes

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Speaker 1: used for fireworks, And he points to a few early

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Speaker 1: mentions of of this sort of thing. He points to

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Speaker 1: the Tu song dynasty writer Wang and Nan Shi, who

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

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

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Speaker 1: amidst the crackling of exploding bamboo, a year is gone

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

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Speaker 1: wine of suzu. Not to me, that's availing itself of

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Speaker 1: multiple interpretations when the year is gone amidst the crackling

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: wonderful poetry to it. That's certainly it does seem to

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Speaker 1: be describing, uh, you know, whatever it's can get 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 erupturing,

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Speaker 1: for instance, um, the popping of a of of of

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Speaker 1: a pimple or or a blister, or or some sort

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

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

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Speaker 1: are again it's more of a bursting or erupturing and

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Speaker 1: and I would you know, we wouldn't necessarily compare it

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Speaker 1: to an exploding. Likewise, if you were doing something with

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

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Speaker 1: or water and then you're bursting them in some fashion,

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Speaker 1: it's still probably a different thing than just explosion. I

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Speaker 1: can imagine that with the bladder, because it seems like

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

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

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Speaker 1: of some kind of like tactile blasts that you can feel. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and you're just not going to get that with a

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Speaker 1: with with a blood filled tick or with a pimple.

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Speaker 1: 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 are 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. Yeah, so um I mentioned there was another

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Speaker 1: um 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 Chinese poetry, said to be compiled

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

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

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Speaker 1: through seven seventy one b c E. And it translates

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Speaker 1: 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 upgrading of the bamboo popping effect into

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: it's easy to simply extrapolate our modern enjoyment of such

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Speaker 1: pops and bangs to ancient people's. And I do think

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Speaker 1: it's perfectly fair to assume this is a large part

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Speaker 1: of it. You know, like a startling sound is amusing

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Speaker 1: and uh, you know, you start, you're scared for a second,

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Speaker 1: and then you're relieved and you're laughing like that's I

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Speaker 1: think that's just part of the universal human experience, and

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Speaker 1: it's been that way for for a very long time. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I'm reminded of the psychological attraction people have to popping

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Speaker 1: bubble wrap. Why do people like doing that so much?

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Speaker 1: I think we hypothesized in a previous episode of Invention

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Speaker 1: that it might have something to do with grooming instincts maybe,

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Speaker 1: but back to pimple popping and tick bursting, right exactly.

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Speaker 1: But I think part of it also, especially when you

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Speaker 1: see children do it, it seems a little bit less

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Speaker 1: like anxiety relieving grooming behaviors with them and more like

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Speaker 1: a game of Jack in the Box or Pop goes

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Speaker 1: the Weasel or Peek a Boo or something. It's just

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Speaker 1: repeatedly startling yourself with the sound and enjoying it absolutely.

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Speaker 1: And so I think it again, it's perfectly fair to

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Speaker 1: say this is a large part of what we're talking

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Speaker 1: about here. But another part of the tradition is the

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Speaker 1: use of loud noises to frighten a way uh speared

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Speaker 1: it's or monsters. Uh. The more recent version of this

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Speaker 1: is the idea of frightening away the New Year's beast,

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Speaker 1: the nun Shao. Now there's some discussion about whether this

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Speaker 1: is actually, you know, how how old this tradition goes back.

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Speaker 1: There's some that say that it's essentially a recent tradition

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Speaker 1: that's popped up. And this gets into you know, some

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Speaker 1: of the the Chinese New Year celebrations that most of

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Speaker 1: us are familiar with seeing, you know, the idea of

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Speaker 1: like a lion dance taking place and firecrackers going off,

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Speaker 1: that sort of thing. But it also correlates to an

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Speaker 1: ancient tradition that Juan discusses, the shan Jao. According to

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Speaker 1: the Han dynasty classic The Book of Gods and Spirits,

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Speaker 1: these strange creatures would harass camp fires in the night,

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Speaker 1: and they were also said in some traditions to carry

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Speaker 1: a disease that could cause chills and fevers. So what

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Speaker 1: you did is you use bamboo, firewood because that would,

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Speaker 1: of course, uh pop at regular intervals and create these

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Speaker 1: frightening noises that would keep the monsters, spirits, creatures, whatever

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

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Speaker 1: 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. One of one of

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

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Speaker 1: von Bland titled The Sinister Way, the Divine and the

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Speaker 1: Demonic and Chinese religious culture. And in it, uh he

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Speaker 1: says that shan zhao sometimes translated as mountain goblins uh

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Speaker 1: 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. Over all, he seems to characterize them

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Speaker 1: as a kind of a very classic type of monster.

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

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

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

401
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Speaker 1: see this, uh in cultures around the world, right, I mean,

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Speaker 1: the darkest is frightening. The wilds are frightening, especially if

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

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

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Speaker 1: China to foreign conquerors in three seventeen, the Chinese rulers

406
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Speaker 1: were displaced to the south, where they encountered a dense,

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Speaker 1: humid subtropical environment along with rugged mountains, along with new

408
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Speaker 1: wildlife and native people's. So he says that this was

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Speaker 1: to to the rulers of that have that had come

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Speaker 1: down from northern China, this was a place of barbaric peoples,

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Speaker 1: of savage spirits and uh. And thus you see that

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Speaker 1: it may be strengthening predispositions for this sort of folkloric motif.

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Speaker 1: Though then again, I wonder how much um the idea

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Speaker 1: of like mountain goblins that are considered somewhat humanoids, somewhat

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Speaker 1: ape like, might have been inspired by encounters with actual

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Speaker 1: wildlife like I know, of course, gibbons traditionally occupied much

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Speaker 1: of ancient China and there, and there's a lot of

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Speaker 1: consciousness of gibbons in Chinese culture and poetry. Yeah, absolutely,

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Speaker 1: um and and apparently some some reads on the sheng

420
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Speaker 1: z Au certainly point towards, you know, actual apes as

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Speaker 1: being at least part of it, you know, because indeed,

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Speaker 1: what do we know about a lot of monkeys species

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Speaker 1: in the monkeys, especially in the wild, is that they

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Speaker 1: can be curious, they can be um, they can be

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Speaker 1: some a manner of a pest when they encounter human activities.

426
00:23:46,160 --> 00:23:47,879
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, I don't know how much we

427
00:23:47,920 --> 00:23:51,159
Speaker 1: should read into the idea of illness being caused by them,

428
00:23:51,160 --> 00:23:53,440
Speaker 1: because you see this a lot with mythical creatures, right

429
00:23:53,520 --> 00:23:57,320
Speaker 1: and in mythical and magical beings and magical people's they

430
00:23:57,359 --> 00:24:00,600
Speaker 1: cause disease their way of explaining illness in a pre

431
00:24:00,720 --> 00:24:03,840
Speaker 1: germ theory world. But at the same time, you know,

432
00:24:03,880 --> 00:24:08,320
Speaker 1: obviously one can transmit illnesses from uh, wild animals, so

433
00:24:08,359 --> 00:24:11,720
Speaker 1: that could potentially be a part of it, I guess. Uh. However,

434
00:24:11,800 --> 00:24:15,320
Speaker 1: you do see folks that go in an entirely cryptid

435
00:24:15,359 --> 00:24:17,080
Speaker 1: direction with all of this, and they're like, oh, well,

436
00:24:17,119 --> 00:24:21,400
Speaker 1: this is clearly uh, you know, we're clearly talking about sasquatches. Here.

437
00:24:21,640 --> 00:24:23,720
Speaker 1: Was there an X Files episode about the chen Zio

438
00:24:24,320 --> 00:24:26,240
Speaker 1: I don't know. You're the one to tell me about

439
00:24:26,280 --> 00:24:28,679
Speaker 1: the whether there's an X Files episode or not. I

440
00:24:28,720 --> 00:24:32,520
Speaker 1: don't remember one. But you know, they they turned through

441
00:24:32,560 --> 00:24:34,600
Speaker 1: a lot of cryptids over the course of that show.

442
00:24:34,640 --> 00:24:36,560
Speaker 1: There's a lot of seasons to fill. At some point

443
00:24:36,640 --> 00:24:39,479
Speaker 1: they were even doing the Jersey Devil, so you know,

444
00:24:39,760 --> 00:24:42,399
Speaker 1: they were really really rooting around in the bottom of

445
00:24:42,400 --> 00:24:44,919
Speaker 1: the bucket. But but that does also point to you know,

446
00:24:44,960 --> 00:24:47,240
Speaker 1: you can point to plenty of other cultures that have

447
00:24:47,359 --> 00:24:50,320
Speaker 1: some sort of a wild man of the woods kind

448
00:24:50,359 --> 00:24:54,560
Speaker 1: of uh creature or multiple creatures in their mythology, like

449
00:24:54,880 --> 00:24:57,400
Speaker 1: uh into a certain extent, a number of these could

450
00:24:57,440 --> 00:25:03,080
Speaker 1: be inspired by observance, is of ape creatures in the wild? Yeah, sure,

451
00:25:03,080 --> 00:25:04,719
Speaker 1: I mean that That's always one of the great mysteries

452
00:25:04,720 --> 00:25:07,560
Speaker 1: when you're dealing with mythical beasts is like how what

453
00:25:07,720 --> 00:25:11,120
Speaker 1: percent of it is imagination and what percent is inspired

454
00:25:11,160 --> 00:25:13,600
Speaker 1: by something people saw, either like you know, seeing a

455
00:25:13,640 --> 00:25:17,240
Speaker 1: person and misunderstanding what you saw, or seeing some seeing

456
00:25:17,240 --> 00:25:21,359
Speaker 1: wildlife and misunderstanding. Yeah. Now, now Von Glen points out

457
00:25:21,400 --> 00:25:25,000
Speaker 1: that there are other things that we're sort of classified

458
00:25:25,040 --> 00:25:27,920
Speaker 1: as as also being chan zal in essence. One of

459
00:25:27,960 --> 00:25:30,800
Speaker 1: them was this, uh, these entities called the wutong Shin

460
00:25:30,960 --> 00:25:32,680
Speaker 1: that I think we talked about in the past on

461
00:25:32,720 --> 00:25:35,479
Speaker 1: the show because there in some ways, in some versions

462
00:25:35,520 --> 00:25:40,320
Speaker 1: of them are comparable to incubi, demons and European traditions.

463
00:25:41,160 --> 00:25:44,400
Speaker 1: But but these are as you often see with with

464
00:25:44,600 --> 00:25:48,520
Speaker 1: mythical creatures and beings, and in cultures, the wutong Shin

465
00:25:48,680 --> 00:25:51,560
Speaker 1: end up like changing over time and become being more

466
00:25:51,640 --> 00:25:55,040
Speaker 1: like gods and being something that should be revered, whereas

467
00:25:55,520 --> 00:25:59,240
Speaker 1: uh von Glan points out that the the Chanzhao goblins

468
00:25:59,359 --> 00:26:04,200
Speaker 1: just remain untransformed in cultural traditions. They remain these pesky

469
00:26:04,359 --> 00:26:08,280
Speaker 1: goblins of the wild. And one issue that I found

470
00:26:08,400 --> 00:26:10,960
Speaker 1: rather interesting here that I don't really have a firm

471
00:26:11,000 --> 00:26:14,040
Speaker 1: answer on is a is why in some cases, like

472
00:26:14,200 --> 00:26:16,840
Speaker 1: a number of cases, they're described as ape like, but

473
00:26:16,960 --> 00:26:20,120
Speaker 1: sometimes they have inverted feet and then perhaps in some

474
00:26:20,160 --> 00:26:23,119
Speaker 1: cases a single leg. And that made me think of

475
00:26:23,160 --> 00:26:27,360
Speaker 1: these other cases of monopeds which are described in various traditions,

476
00:26:27,400 --> 00:26:30,199
Speaker 1: including by plenty of the elder. Uh, the notion of

477
00:26:30,320 --> 00:26:34,800
Speaker 1: one legged wood spirits that that one might encounter in

478
00:26:34,840 --> 00:26:38,520
Speaker 1: the wild. Again entirely speculative here, but I'm I just

479
00:26:38,840 --> 00:26:42,320
Speaker 1: wonder if that kind of concept could be inspired by

480
00:26:42,359 --> 00:26:45,960
Speaker 1: seeing the different locomotion of apes like gibbons who walk

481
00:26:46,080 --> 00:26:50,240
Speaker 1: or climb or hang with the aid of very long arms. Yeah,

482
00:26:50,359 --> 00:26:52,960
Speaker 1: or kind of like a a side profile kind of

483
00:26:53,000 --> 00:26:55,480
Speaker 1: issue where you're just looking at them from the side

484
00:26:55,520 --> 00:26:58,119
Speaker 1: and they're like, oh, they're kind of moving like a

485
00:26:58,200 --> 00:27:00,359
Speaker 1: human might move if they had one leg and a

486
00:27:00,359 --> 00:27:03,679
Speaker 1: pair of crutches, that sort of thing. Um, So you know,

487
00:27:03,760 --> 00:27:07,679
Speaker 1: that's always a possibility one of the uh. And then

488
00:27:07,720 --> 00:27:09,760
Speaker 1: also you could also throw in, well, it's a minimally

489
00:27:10,040 --> 00:27:13,240
Speaker 1: counterintuitive creature design, right, what I have not two legs

490
00:27:13,280 --> 00:27:17,240
Speaker 1: but one. Likewise, you could compare it to congenital deformities

491
00:27:17,280 --> 00:27:21,280
Speaker 1: in human beings. But but one interesting hypothesis that I

492
00:27:21,359 --> 00:27:25,200
Speaker 1: ran across was from the scholar Carl A. P Ruck,

493
00:27:25,720 --> 00:27:28,439
Speaker 1: who proposed that at least some of these might be

494
00:27:28,440 --> 00:27:33,920
Speaker 1: connected to Vedic traditions involving soma um, which of course

495
00:27:34,000 --> 00:27:37,040
Speaker 1: is uh soma. Soma was this essentially some sort of

496
00:27:37,160 --> 00:27:40,119
Speaker 1: drug that is described in ancient texts, and the actual

497
00:27:40,400 --> 00:27:43,439
Speaker 1: botanical reality of soma remains something of a mystery, with

498
00:27:43,520 --> 00:27:49,000
Speaker 1: explanations ranging from psilocybin to something like a fedra. Okay,

499
00:27:49,200 --> 00:27:54,720
Speaker 1: but but Ruck's proposition here is that this idea of

500
00:27:54,720 --> 00:27:57,879
Speaker 1: a one armed being in the woods is essentially tied

501
00:27:57,920 --> 00:28:01,760
Speaker 1: to a botanical description. So typically he wrote about shade foots,

502
00:28:02,440 --> 00:28:05,000
Speaker 1: a fabulous tribe from India who were thought to jump

503
00:28:05,040 --> 00:28:07,760
Speaker 1: about on a single foot that could be used as

504
00:28:07,800 --> 00:28:11,679
Speaker 1: a paracel uh. And apparently the idea is that what

505
00:28:11,760 --> 00:28:15,359
Speaker 1: if this is uh, you know, is an exaggerated um

506
00:28:15,480 --> 00:28:19,600
Speaker 1: uh anthropomorphic description of a plant that you would encounter

507
00:28:19,920 --> 00:28:22,359
Speaker 1: in the wild. I don't know. I don't have a

508
00:28:22,359 --> 00:28:25,639
Speaker 1: firm answer. What's an interesting idea. I'm trying to picture

509
00:28:25,640 --> 00:28:29,479
Speaker 1: it a plant that that could metaphorically be described as

510
00:28:29,480 --> 00:28:32,080
Speaker 1: a person with one foot who can also use their

511
00:28:32,119 --> 00:28:35,399
Speaker 1: foot as a parasol. I guess. I mean, so my

512
00:28:35,440 --> 00:28:40,040
Speaker 1: family recently went mushroom foraging and and also just sort

513
00:28:40,080 --> 00:28:42,280
Speaker 1: of identifying mushrooms, and you know, we have a number

514
00:28:42,280 --> 00:28:43,800
Speaker 1: of them. We have. The Old Man in the Woods

515
00:28:43,920 --> 00:28:45,480
Speaker 1: is one of the old men of the woods, is

516
00:28:45,480 --> 00:28:48,040
Speaker 1: one of the mushrooms you encounter, you know, the the

517
00:28:48,120 --> 00:28:50,400
Speaker 1: chicken or hen of the woods is another. So there's

518
00:28:50,400 --> 00:28:51,719
Speaker 1: a lot of the sort of thing that goes on

519
00:28:51,800 --> 00:28:55,560
Speaker 1: with the the naming of and certainly the non scientific

520
00:28:55,680 --> 00:28:59,400
Speaker 1: naming of various um organisms in the wild. So, you know,

521
00:28:59,560 --> 00:29:02,200
Speaker 1: it's seem totally possible, even I don't know that there's

522
00:29:02,200 --> 00:29:05,000
Speaker 1: actually any any evidence for it. Uh. If it's it

523
00:29:05,040 --> 00:29:08,200
Speaker 1: may just be pure speculation, but it's something to think about.

524
00:29:08,600 --> 00:29:13,400
Speaker 1: As for von Glan himself, he ultimately summarizes that that

525
00:29:13,480 --> 00:29:16,680
Speaker 1: he thinks, quote, it seems likely that these demonic images

526
00:29:16,760 --> 00:29:20,400
Speaker 1: derived from frightening encounters with denizens of the mountains, both

527
00:29:20,480 --> 00:29:23,240
Speaker 1: human and ape. Okay, so it might be just sort

528
00:29:23,240 --> 00:29:27,080
Speaker 1: of conflating of stories of people encountering gibbons, people encountering

529
00:29:27,120 --> 00:29:30,080
Speaker 1: other people they weren't familiar with, and and it turns

530
00:29:30,120 --> 00:29:34,120
Speaker 1: into monster stories, but ultimately leads to this consciousness of

531
00:29:34,320 --> 00:29:36,800
Speaker 1: a thing you can do to repel the monsters of

532
00:29:36,840 --> 00:29:39,520
Speaker 1: the wild, the monsters of the mountains, is that you

533
00:29:39,600 --> 00:29:43,360
Speaker 1: can have a bamboo torch that explodes and frightens and

534
00:29:43,440 --> 00:29:45,960
Speaker 1: drives them off. Yeah, you know, you may. And and

535
00:29:46,080 --> 00:29:47,640
Speaker 1: it's one of those things which it makes sense if

536
00:29:47,680 --> 00:29:51,480
Speaker 1: you're dealing with an actual, um, frightening animal or you know,

537
00:29:51,520 --> 00:29:53,680
Speaker 1: in the wild, makes them loud noises scared away. But

538
00:29:53,760 --> 00:29:57,160
Speaker 1: also it's something you can do against even ideas of darkness,

539
00:29:57,280 --> 00:30:02,960
Speaker 1: right more supernatural. This is about about the nature of reality.

540
00:30:03,040 --> 00:30:04,719
Speaker 1: You know, I am frightened, but hey, I can make

541
00:30:04,720 --> 00:30:07,760
Speaker 1: a loud noise and uh, and that's gonna if that's

542
00:30:07,760 --> 00:30:11,200
Speaker 1: at least something there's something actually very instinctual. I think

543
00:30:11,240 --> 00:30:14,800
Speaker 1: about the idea of making noise when you are frightened,

544
00:30:14,960 --> 00:30:17,719
Speaker 1: especially in the dark or in the wild. You know,

545
00:30:17,760 --> 00:30:22,160
Speaker 1: there's the old expression whistling, whistling past the graveyard, um

546
00:30:22,760 --> 00:30:25,040
Speaker 1: or you'll just notice it in people when they start

547
00:30:25,040 --> 00:30:27,960
Speaker 1: getting scared walking around in a place, like kids sometimes

548
00:30:27,960 --> 00:30:32,200
Speaker 1: maybe start talking louder, or start talking to themselves or

549
00:30:32,240 --> 00:30:35,520
Speaker 1: snapping their fingers or whistling or humming. We've got this

550
00:30:35,640 --> 00:30:40,120
Speaker 1: natural sense that making noises provide security. Yeah. I remember

551
00:30:40,120 --> 00:30:43,920
Speaker 1: thinking this while watching Um the movie Yet, the recent

552
00:30:43,920 --> 00:30:46,760
Speaker 1: adaptation of Suphan King's Yet you know, where these children

553
00:30:46,800 --> 00:30:50,760
Speaker 1: are encountering this horrifying supernatural entity, And it just kept

554
00:30:50,760 --> 00:30:53,880
Speaker 1: thinking like, oh, man, if I encountered Pennywise, the clown.

555
00:30:53,920 --> 00:30:55,480
Speaker 1: I would just yell at him. I would just yell

556
00:30:55,480 --> 00:30:57,320
Speaker 1: at him. He wouldn't even know what to do, you know,

557
00:30:57,400 --> 00:30:59,920
Speaker 1: like that, Like that's one way you can diffuse the

558
00:31:00,080 --> 00:31:03,200
Speaker 1: supernatural adversary of fear. He didn't expect you to go

559
00:31:03,240 --> 00:31:07,840
Speaker 1: on the offensive and and and shout things at him.

560
00:31:07,880 --> 00:31:10,040
Speaker 1: So yeah, maybe it's connected to that. I don't know.

561
00:31:10,760 --> 00:31:12,720
Speaker 1: Should we take a break and then come back to

562
00:31:12,760 --> 00:31:15,360
Speaker 1: talk more about the invention of fireworks. Yes, we'll take

563
00:31:15,400 --> 00:31:17,480
Speaker 1: a quick break for the ad goblins and then we'll

564
00:31:17,520 --> 00:31:23,600
Speaker 1: be back with more content. Okay, we heard from the

565
00:31:23,640 --> 00:31:27,080
Speaker 1: ad goblins, but we we we use some popping devices

566
00:31:27,120 --> 00:31:29,000
Speaker 1: to drive them away, and now we're back into the

567
00:31:29,040 --> 00:31:32,800
Speaker 1: history of proto fireworks at least. Yeah. So, yeah, we've

568
00:31:32,840 --> 00:31:35,880
Speaker 1: talked about proto fireworks, but we're do actual fireworks enter

569
00:31:35,960 --> 00:31:38,080
Speaker 1: the picture. Things that we can that we would actually

570
00:31:38,120 --> 00:31:40,320
Speaker 1: look at, say on a table and say, oh, look

571
00:31:40,360 --> 00:31:43,040
Speaker 1: at that. That's that's a firework, that's a firecracker, etcetera.

572
00:31:43,680 --> 00:31:47,840
Speaker 1: So basically, the ideas that the Chinese simply augmented their

573
00:31:47,920 --> 00:31:53,440
Speaker 1: fire and noisemaker practices with chemically volatile substances. Once those

574
00:31:53,440 --> 00:31:56,680
Speaker 1: substances were discovered, So as we discussed in our our

575
00:31:56,720 --> 00:32:00,160
Speaker 1: Mash episodes, sulfur tipped matches were already in use in

576
00:32:00,280 --> 00:32:03,680
Speaker 1: China by the sixth century CE. But the key to

577
00:32:03,800 --> 00:32:09,280
Speaker 1: fireworks is, of course, uh, this special array of chemicals

578
00:32:09,280 --> 00:32:12,320
Speaker 1: that come together to to to make gunpowder. Uh. There's

579
00:32:12,360 --> 00:32:16,560
Speaker 1: of course saltpeter, which is potassium nitrate, which was already

580
00:32:16,560 --> 00:32:19,680
Speaker 1: being stuffed into bamboo during the Southern Song period of

581
00:32:20,800 --> 00:32:23,880
Speaker 1: twelve seventy nine in order to create a more impressive

582
00:32:23,960 --> 00:32:28,080
Speaker 1: bang with the bamboo. And between these two periods, potassium

583
00:32:28,120 --> 00:32:30,680
Speaker 1: nitrate is said to have emerged from the realm of

584
00:32:30,760 --> 00:32:33,840
Speaker 1: Chinese alchemy. Yeah, so maybe we should stop for a

585
00:32:33,840 --> 00:32:36,520
Speaker 1: second to look at the chemical properties of potassium nitrate

586
00:32:36,520 --> 00:32:40,040
Speaker 1: and understand the role it plays in the development of firecrackers.

587
00:32:40,200 --> 00:32:42,880
Speaker 1: So back to the principles of fire. You know, we've

588
00:32:42,880 --> 00:32:45,400
Speaker 1: talked about a number of times what does fire need

589
00:32:45,480 --> 00:32:48,720
Speaker 1: in order to burn? It needs fuel, It needs heat,

590
00:32:48,880 --> 00:32:52,320
Speaker 1: and it needs oxygen because fire is a chemical reaction

591
00:32:52,840 --> 00:32:57,640
Speaker 1: in which fuel reacts with oxygen underheat to produce byproducts

592
00:32:57,640 --> 00:33:00,600
Speaker 1: of primarily carbon dioxide and water vay bur with other

593
00:33:00,720 --> 00:33:04,840
Speaker 1: trace elements and molecules given off and potassium nitrate or

594
00:33:04,880 --> 00:33:09,840
Speaker 1: saltpeter can aid in the process of combustion because of

595
00:33:09,880 --> 00:33:13,520
Speaker 1: its chemical composition. So potassium nitrate is made out of

596
00:33:13,520 --> 00:33:18,400
Speaker 1: one nitrogen atom, one potassium atom, and three oxygen atoms,

597
00:33:18,760 --> 00:33:21,360
Speaker 1: and the key to its role in combustion is is

598
00:33:21,400 --> 00:33:25,000
Speaker 1: those three oxygen atoms. It is an oxygen donor to

599
00:33:25,080 --> 00:33:29,400
Speaker 1: the combustion process. Fire can only burn as fast as

600
00:33:29,440 --> 00:33:32,960
Speaker 1: it can access oxygen to react with the fuel. Remember

601
00:33:33,000 --> 00:33:35,880
Speaker 1: it's a reaction. Now. Of course, the atmosphere is full

602
00:33:35,920 --> 00:33:39,320
Speaker 1: of oxygen, so there's you know, on Earth, it's pretty

603
00:33:39,320 --> 00:33:41,880
Speaker 1: easy to get fire going if you have enough heat

604
00:33:41,920 --> 00:33:45,000
Speaker 1: and fuel because there's just free oxygen all over the place.

605
00:33:45,520 --> 00:33:49,120
Speaker 1: But the surface of a burning log can still only

606
00:33:49,160 --> 00:33:53,400
Speaker 1: access so much atmospheric oxygen at once, right, like you

607
00:33:53,440 --> 00:33:57,120
Speaker 1: know that it's giving off chemicals and gases as it burns,

608
00:33:57,160 --> 00:33:59,600
Speaker 1: of course, and then there's it can really only react

609
00:33:59,640 --> 00:34:02,600
Speaker 1: with the oxygen that's sort of touching right along the

610
00:34:02,720 --> 00:34:06,360
Speaker 1: edge of the log. So there is there's a limit

611
00:34:06,400 --> 00:34:09,520
Speaker 1: to the rate of combustion imposed by the amount of

612
00:34:09,520 --> 00:34:13,920
Speaker 1: oxygen available to react. At the same time, potassium nitrate

613
00:34:13,960 --> 00:34:17,839
Speaker 1: plays the role of an oxidizer in the combustion reactions.

614
00:34:18,160 --> 00:34:22,000
Speaker 1: It provides a ready supply of extra oxygen, so in

615
00:34:22,040 --> 00:34:26,200
Speaker 1: the presence of heat and fuel, saltpeter will massively accelerate

616
00:34:26,280 --> 00:34:30,040
Speaker 1: the speed at which fuel burns, meaning you get often

617
00:34:30,120 --> 00:34:33,600
Speaker 1: something beyond simple burning and something that that qualifies as

618
00:34:33,640 --> 00:34:37,960
Speaker 1: an explosion. And this is where the Chinese alchemists come

619
00:34:38,000 --> 00:34:39,920
Speaker 1: in now. And now we refer to them as alchemists,

620
00:34:39,920 --> 00:34:43,520
Speaker 1: but obviously we're using we have Western alchemy and then

621
00:34:43,520 --> 00:34:47,520
Speaker 1: we have Chinese alchemy, and uh they're directly comparable in

622
00:34:47,520 --> 00:34:49,800
Speaker 1: a number of ways. I mean, ultimately, you're dealing with

623
00:34:49,800 --> 00:34:52,360
Speaker 1: with people on both sides that are attempting to to

624
00:34:52,400 --> 00:34:55,200
Speaker 1: figure out what substances do and what they can achieve

625
00:34:55,239 --> 00:34:58,280
Speaker 1: in various combinations with each other, right, And these practices

626
00:34:58,280 --> 00:35:02,319
Speaker 1: are usually some combination actually of real scientific study of

627
00:35:02,400 --> 00:35:05,120
Speaker 1: the material properties of different chemicals and a lot of

628
00:35:05,160 --> 00:35:08,919
Speaker 1: magical beliefs mixed in. Yes, And in this particular case,

629
00:35:09,360 --> 00:35:12,160
Speaker 1: uh it said that the alchemist in general were attempting

630
00:35:12,200 --> 00:35:16,360
Speaker 1: to create pills of immortality or dan, which interestingly involved

631
00:35:16,400 --> 00:35:20,879
Speaker 1: mixing up a compound of saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal. And

632
00:35:21,160 --> 00:35:23,640
Speaker 1: you might be wondering why these particular substance as well.

633
00:35:23,680 --> 00:35:27,560
Speaker 1: For instance, sulfur was used for skin ailments, saltpeter for fever.

634
00:35:28,120 --> 00:35:30,200
Speaker 1: And uh, the thing is when you hit just the

635
00:35:30,280 --> 00:35:33,760
Speaker 1: right percentages here, according to one for for saltpeter, sulfur

636
00:35:33,800 --> 00:35:37,239
Speaker 1: and charcoal, it would be like sixty one dirty pot

637
00:35:38,160 --> 00:35:40,920
Speaker 1: and seven point six percent put it all together and

638
00:35:40,960 --> 00:35:44,640
Speaker 1: you have gunpowder. Yeah, and that gunpowder comes together because

639
00:35:44,760 --> 00:35:48,640
Speaker 1: you have mixed up the oxidizer which is the saltpeter,

640
00:35:48,760 --> 00:35:51,920
Speaker 1: the potassium nitrate, and the fuel which is the charcoal

641
00:35:51,920 --> 00:35:54,120
Speaker 1: and the sulfur. And so once you mix them all

642
00:35:54,160 --> 00:35:58,080
Speaker 1: together like that, they can create something that burns suddenly,

643
00:35:58,360 --> 00:36:03,120
Speaker 1: very rapidly. Now, in some traditions, some accounts, this discovery

644
00:36:03,160 --> 00:36:07,919
Speaker 1: is attributed to a particular individual, Uh Sun sim now,

645
00:36:08,440 --> 00:36:12,880
Speaker 1: who would have been born in UH five, and he

646
00:36:13,040 --> 00:36:16,600
Speaker 1: was the so called King of Medicine. He wrote um

647
00:36:16,600 --> 00:36:20,759
Speaker 1: in the translations of the titles essential Formulas for Emergencies

648
00:36:20,800 --> 00:36:23,600
Speaker 1: worth a thousand pieces of gold and then a follow

649
00:36:23,680 --> 00:36:26,760
Speaker 1: up supplement to the Formulas of a thousand gold worth,

650
00:36:27,040 --> 00:36:30,640
Speaker 1: And even in translation, those are simply marvelous titles. So

651
00:36:31,160 --> 00:36:36,279
Speaker 1: it's yeah, that's great. My next novel should be called

652
00:36:36,320 --> 00:36:39,000
Speaker 1: the story that's worth a million bucks. There you go,

653
00:36:39,120 --> 00:36:43,680
Speaker 1: it's just good marketing. Now, it seems like it's unlikely

654
00:36:43,719 --> 00:36:47,440
Speaker 1: that that this individual actually invented gunpowder, but he certainly

655
00:36:47,480 --> 00:36:51,360
Speaker 1: recorded its usage, uh in, particularly in a book Optimization

656
00:36:51,440 --> 00:36:55,960
Speaker 1: of Alchemical Processes by Sulfuric Method that translation, and it's

657
00:36:55,960 --> 00:37:00,320
Speaker 1: it seemingly the oldest known reference to gunpowder, so we

658
00:37:00,360 --> 00:37:03,120
Speaker 1: can trace it roughly to his lifetime or you know,

659
00:37:03,200 --> 00:37:08,120
Speaker 1: probably before. And interestingly, with its medicinal roots, gunpowder continued

660
00:37:08,160 --> 00:37:11,239
Speaker 1: to be used as a curative property in um in

661
00:37:11,560 --> 00:37:14,080
Speaker 1: in traditional Chinese medicine for things like ring worm and

662
00:37:14,160 --> 00:37:17,480
Speaker 1: various skin issues into the sixteenth century. Yeah, and of course,

663
00:37:17,480 --> 00:37:21,719
Speaker 1: saltpeter had many uses outside the creation of saying elixirs

664
00:37:21,760 --> 00:37:25,640
Speaker 1: of immortality or or the creation of gunpowder. For example,

665
00:37:25,640 --> 00:37:30,680
Speaker 1: saltpeter has long been a preservative for certain kinds of foods.

666
00:37:30,800 --> 00:37:33,560
Speaker 1: You know, it's been a preservative for meats. In a way,

667
00:37:33,600 --> 00:37:39,360
Speaker 1: it's an elixir of immortality for salami exactly. Now, obviously,

668
00:37:39,400 --> 00:37:43,200
Speaker 1: gunpowder has its own enormous history, and it's gonna end

669
00:37:43,239 --> 00:37:47,120
Speaker 1: up playing a much bigger role in global affairs in

670
00:37:47,120 --> 00:37:50,160
Speaker 1: the centuries to follow. But the Chinese. This is essential,

671
00:37:50,320 --> 00:37:53,280
Speaker 1: essential to to point out the Chinese realized its military

672
00:37:53,280 --> 00:37:57,040
Speaker 1: potential pretty early on, like during the Tang dynasty, and

673
00:37:57,080 --> 00:38:00,120
Speaker 1: it was compiled in Chinese military text by ten four be.

674
00:38:00,400 --> 00:38:03,279
Speaker 1: And this is notable because there's something of this this

675
00:38:03,560 --> 00:38:07,759
Speaker 1: myth in Western traditions that while a Chinese invention gunpowder

676
00:38:07,800 --> 00:38:11,360
Speaker 1: would ultimately require Western ingenuity to take off as a weapon,

677
00:38:11,800 --> 00:38:15,640
Speaker 1: the idea that the Chinese invented something but didn't really

678
00:38:15,800 --> 00:38:18,479
Speaker 1: understand what they'd invented, and nothing could really be further

679
00:38:18,520 --> 00:38:23,320
Speaker 1: from the truth, because they developed rockets, fire arrows, fire lances,

680
00:38:23,640 --> 00:38:27,720
Speaker 1: They were using uh long bamboo tubes that were packed

681
00:38:27,760 --> 00:38:31,160
Speaker 1: with with gunpowder as early as like eleven thirty two,

682
00:38:31,480 --> 00:38:35,799
Speaker 1: and there's evidence of bronze cannons as early as umty

683
00:38:35,840 --> 00:38:39,600
Speaker 1: two or eleven eight. Even so, the use of military

684
00:38:39,600 --> 00:38:43,160
Speaker 1: gunpowder advancements was very much a part of the Chinese

685
00:38:43,160 --> 00:38:46,279
Speaker 1: world at the time, and it's just spread outward from there,

686
00:38:46,280 --> 00:38:50,400
Speaker 1: transforming warfare everywhere it went. And it's interesting to consider

687
00:38:50,440 --> 00:38:56,000
Speaker 1: the ongoing relationship between recreational fireworks and warfare because obviously

688
00:38:56,080 --> 00:38:58,960
Speaker 1: the same chemicals can be used for both. You know,

689
00:38:59,040 --> 00:39:03,920
Speaker 1: you can use gunpower or to make a harmless celebratory device,

690
00:39:04,080 --> 00:39:07,200
Speaker 1: or to make a cannon that kills people. And it's

691
00:39:07,239 --> 00:39:11,800
Speaker 1: interesting how this association has remained in people's minds throughout

692
00:39:11,840 --> 00:39:15,760
Speaker 1: the centuries because very often celebratory fireworks, not not always,

693
00:39:15,800 --> 00:39:19,839
Speaker 1: but very often are used to celebrate things like military victories.

694
00:39:19,880 --> 00:39:23,040
Speaker 1: It's almost like they call to mind the battle that

695
00:39:23,080 --> 00:39:26,040
Speaker 1: you're thinking back on and celebrating. Oh yeah, I mean,

696
00:39:26,360 --> 00:39:28,759
Speaker 1: we see that in the United States with the Star

697
00:39:28,800 --> 00:39:31,400
Speaker 1: Spangled banner, which is talking about stuff blowing up in

698
00:39:31,400 --> 00:39:34,560
Speaker 1: the sky, and then especially around the Fourth of July,

699
00:39:34,760 --> 00:39:38,320
Speaker 1: it is uh, it is paired with actual fireworks exploding

700
00:39:38,320 --> 00:39:40,560
Speaker 1: in the sky. To get back into this world of

701
00:39:40,560 --> 00:39:43,319
Speaker 1: fireworks proper, we and in the Chinese origins, we can

702
00:39:43,360 --> 00:39:47,879
Speaker 1: see how explosive and combustive substances come together with boo jou,

703
00:39:48,120 --> 00:39:51,440
Speaker 1: you know. But let's not forget the other aspect of fireworks,

704
00:39:51,440 --> 00:39:53,319
Speaker 1: the part that you you might not think about as

705
00:39:53,400 --> 00:39:55,960
Speaker 1: much when you buy a bunch of fireworks, or even

706
00:39:56,000 --> 00:39:58,959
Speaker 1: when you set them off at night, but the next

707
00:39:59,040 --> 00:40:01,960
Speaker 1: day when you go clean up your yard, uh, you're

708
00:40:02,000 --> 00:40:05,000
Speaker 1: going to encounter the reality of all the paper and

709
00:40:05,080 --> 00:40:09,239
Speaker 1: cardboard that makes a firework possible. Yeah, it often looks

710
00:40:09,280 --> 00:40:12,840
Speaker 1: like there has been like a battle between armies of

711
00:40:12,880 --> 00:40:16,480
Speaker 1: toilet paper rolls that just hacked each other to bits. Yeah,

712
00:40:16,480 --> 00:40:19,440
Speaker 1: because even today fireworks depend on paper and cardboard. That

713
00:40:19,520 --> 00:40:23,480
Speaker 1: tank you were describing earlier was inevitably made out of

714
00:40:23,520 --> 00:40:26,960
Speaker 1: cardboard and paper. But as we explored in our recent

715
00:40:27,040 --> 00:40:30,160
Speaker 1: two parter on Stuff to your Mind about the invention

716
00:40:30,239 --> 00:40:32,880
Speaker 1: of the book, the history of the book, paper was

717
00:40:32,960 --> 00:40:37,239
Speaker 1: an expensive luxury in in olden times. Uh, Chinese paper

718
00:40:37,280 --> 00:40:40,759
Speaker 1: had already been around for centuries, but but it was

719
00:40:41,400 --> 00:40:43,480
Speaker 1: it was a it was a high priced substance. This

720
00:40:43,520 --> 00:40:45,440
Speaker 1: was not the kind of thing you would just readily

721
00:40:46,040 --> 00:40:48,759
Speaker 1: filled with gunpowder and set off or burn. But then

722
00:40:48,880 --> 00:40:52,120
Speaker 1: during the Song dynasty we see the creation of bamboo paper,

723
00:40:52,160 --> 00:40:55,240
Speaker 1: which was much more affordable. And so this was finally

724
00:40:55,320 --> 00:40:59,600
Speaker 1: paper that was cost effective enough to use in fireworks,

725
00:41:00,120 --> 00:41:02,000
Speaker 1: you know, pure fireworks, the kind of fire, not not

726
00:41:02,080 --> 00:41:05,840
Speaker 1: just the things that might amuse um, you know, individuals

727
00:41:05,840 --> 00:41:08,120
Speaker 1: of great wealth. That's something that could be you know

728
00:41:08,160 --> 00:41:11,279
Speaker 1: a little more available to everyone else. Yeah, there is.

729
00:41:11,719 --> 00:41:15,600
Speaker 1: There's the main explosive charge, and that's wrapped together with

730
00:41:15,800 --> 00:41:19,120
Speaker 1: a timed ignition device. Which is the fuse. It used

731
00:41:19,120 --> 00:41:21,279
Speaker 1: to be called the match. Now a number of you

732
00:41:21,280 --> 00:41:24,359
Speaker 1: are probably thinking, well, that's a firecracker, and maybe that

733
00:41:24,520 --> 00:41:29,000
Speaker 1: is essentially a bottle rocket. But obviously there are plenty

734
00:41:29,160 --> 00:41:32,200
Speaker 1: of more elaborate fireworks. I mean, they're just thousands of

735
00:41:32,200 --> 00:41:36,440
Speaker 1: types of fireworks today, and and these the more traditional,

736
00:41:36,520 --> 00:41:39,319
Speaker 1: these sort of exploding, sparkling, colorful fireworks. This sort of

737
00:41:39,320 --> 00:41:42,640
Speaker 1: thing didn't become popular in China until apparently the seventeenth

738
00:41:42,719 --> 00:41:46,640
Speaker 1: or eighteenth centuries, during the last Dynastic period of China,

739
00:41:47,120 --> 00:41:50,960
Speaker 1: the Queen Dynasty, and one writes that some historians credit

740
00:41:51,000 --> 00:41:54,600
Speaker 1: fireworks credit these type this type of firework technology to

741
00:41:54,640 --> 00:41:58,040
Speaker 1: a specialist by the name of Le Tai Uh, saying

742
00:41:58,040 --> 00:42:01,280
Speaker 1: that he basically invented these for when he was asked

743
00:42:01,280 --> 00:42:04,719
Speaker 1: by the Longing Emperor to create something special. And the

744
00:42:04,800 --> 00:42:06,680
Speaker 1: story goes that he's, you know, he's been asked to

745
00:42:06,719 --> 00:42:09,040
Speaker 1: create some sort of special fireworks. He goes out and

746
00:42:09,040 --> 00:42:12,400
Speaker 1: he notices all the colorful sparks that are that are

747
00:42:12,440 --> 00:42:15,800
Speaker 1: inside of a blackness shop as the blacksmith is Uh

748
00:42:16,000 --> 00:42:18,279
Speaker 1: is pounding away at the steel and he decides to

749
00:42:18,360 --> 00:42:23,279
Speaker 1: experiment with different sizes of iron particles mixed with the gunpowder. Yeah,

750
00:42:23,320 --> 00:42:25,600
Speaker 1: and this actually does connect to the way that most

751
00:42:25,920 --> 00:42:30,839
Speaker 1: colored fireworks displays are created today. They're they're often produced

752
00:42:30,880 --> 00:42:34,920
Speaker 1: by by packing fireworks shells with these little pellets known

753
00:42:34,960 --> 00:42:38,800
Speaker 1: as stars, that include different types of chemicals, often metal

754
00:42:38,960 --> 00:42:43,760
Speaker 1: salts that wind burned create different colors. So, for example,

755
00:42:43,840 --> 00:42:47,799
Speaker 1: red fireworks often have some kind of strontium content like

756
00:42:47,840 --> 00:42:53,000
Speaker 1: strontium carbonate, or orange fireworks might have calcium chloride and

757
00:42:53,040 --> 00:42:55,920
Speaker 1: so forth. Apparently, blue fireworks are one of the hardest

758
00:42:55,960 --> 00:43:00,560
Speaker 1: colors to make, and that requires copper or copper chloride content.

759
00:43:01,040 --> 00:43:03,799
Speaker 1: But the most common form of fireworks you see in

760
00:43:03,920 --> 00:43:07,400
Speaker 1: big festival displays today, you know, not the little firecrackers

761
00:43:07,440 --> 00:43:09,760
Speaker 1: you set off in your yard, but big festival displays.

762
00:43:09,800 --> 00:43:12,200
Speaker 1: These would generally use what might be known as the

763
00:43:12,280 --> 00:43:15,120
Speaker 1: mortar or the shell model. So you've got a core

764
00:43:15,320 --> 00:43:19,040
Speaker 1: explosive charge that's usually made out of black powder and

765
00:43:19,120 --> 00:43:22,640
Speaker 1: a lift charge. It burns quickly. It it expands and

766
00:43:22,680 --> 00:43:24,799
Speaker 1: turns into heat and gas. It shoots it up into

767
00:43:24,800 --> 00:43:28,200
Speaker 1: the sky and then it is the fuses time, so

768
00:43:28,239 --> 00:43:30,560
Speaker 1: that when it's way up in the sky, it will

769
00:43:30,600 --> 00:43:34,439
Speaker 1: reach the center charge and then it will explode and

770
00:43:34,760 --> 00:43:37,320
Speaker 1: the shell will be packed with all these little things,

771
00:43:37,400 --> 00:43:41,680
Speaker 1: these little explosive balls called stars. And the stars can

772
00:43:41,719 --> 00:43:44,880
Speaker 1: be packed in special arrangements, and the arrangements of the

773
00:43:44,880 --> 00:43:47,960
Speaker 1: stars within the shell is usually what gives rise to

774
00:43:48,040 --> 00:43:51,000
Speaker 1: the patterns of the exploding fireworks. And they're they're actually

775
00:43:51,080 --> 00:43:55,480
Speaker 1: artisans who will make special fireworks, like custom packing of

776
00:43:55,520 --> 00:43:57,880
Speaker 1: the stars inside to give you the color you want

777
00:43:57,920 --> 00:43:59,880
Speaker 1: in the shape of the explosion you want, so you

778
00:44:00,120 --> 00:44:03,600
Speaker 1: get hearts, you can get smiley faces or whatever. And

779
00:44:03,640 --> 00:44:05,880
Speaker 1: I just got to share, By the way, I found

780
00:44:06,360 --> 00:44:09,279
Speaker 1: a Wikipedia article with one of the best sentences in

781
00:44:09,360 --> 00:44:12,360
Speaker 1: English I've ever read. I was looking at this the

782
00:44:12,400 --> 00:44:15,440
Speaker 1: other day. It's from a Wiki article about pyrotechnic stars,

783
00:44:15,480 --> 00:44:19,200
Speaker 1: and the sentence goes, pumped stars are stars that have

784
00:44:19,320 --> 00:44:24,040
Speaker 1: been pumped using a star pump. I love that because,

785
00:44:24,239 --> 00:44:26,560
Speaker 1: out of context, it's just a sentence that says nothing.

786
00:44:27,760 --> 00:44:29,720
Speaker 1: I was trying to think, are there any other ways

787
00:44:30,000 --> 00:44:32,799
Speaker 1: ways you could plug words into that sentence structure to

788
00:44:32,840 --> 00:44:34,920
Speaker 1: make it work? I was thinking, wait a minute, cooked

789
00:44:35,040 --> 00:44:38,280
Speaker 1: rice is rice that has been cooked using a rice cooker.

790
00:44:38,680 --> 00:44:41,560
Speaker 1: There you've done quite work, though, because you can cook

791
00:44:41,640 --> 00:44:44,080
Speaker 1: rice other ways I don't know, but it's star pump

792
00:44:44,200 --> 00:44:46,480
Speaker 1: is as it has only one function and that is

793
00:44:46,480 --> 00:44:49,279
Speaker 1: two pump stars. It's true. Alright. On that note, we're

794
00:44:49,280 --> 00:44:51,000
Speaker 1: going to take one more break, but when we come

795
00:44:51,040 --> 00:44:54,440
Speaker 1: back we'll get into some of the Western tradition of fireworks.

796
00:44:56,080 --> 00:45:00,479
Speaker 1: Thank alright, we're back. So I want to to look

797
00:45:00,680 --> 00:45:05,160
Speaker 1: at a post on the always Wonderful Medieval Manuscripts blog

798
00:45:05,239 --> 00:45:09,080
Speaker 1: on the British Library website. This post is by Alison Ray.

799
00:45:09,440 --> 00:45:11,600
Speaker 1: I feel like I've mentioned pieces by this blog on

800
00:45:11,600 --> 00:45:13,839
Speaker 1: the show before. I think we discussed an awesome one

801
00:45:13,880 --> 00:45:18,240
Speaker 1: they had about anti theft curses in medieval manuscripts. Yes,

802
00:45:18,480 --> 00:45:20,960
Speaker 1: it's just a really great blog to follow, and I'm

803
00:45:20,960 --> 00:45:23,440
Speaker 1: actually going to reference a couple of posts that I

804
00:45:23,480 --> 00:45:26,800
Speaker 1: came across in this episode. So this one talks about

805
00:45:26,840 --> 00:45:29,759
Speaker 1: how fireworks have been a popular source of entertainment in

806
00:45:29,920 --> 00:45:33,720
Speaker 1: England since as early as the fifteenth century. Ray writes

807
00:45:33,800 --> 00:45:37,520
Speaker 1: that the first recorded use of fireworks in England was

808
00:45:37,600 --> 00:45:41,840
Speaker 1: at King Henry the Seventh Wedding celebration in fourteen eighties six.

809
00:45:42,040 --> 00:45:44,719
Speaker 1: And I have seen this historical claim made all over

810
00:45:44,760 --> 00:45:48,120
Speaker 1: the place, and I was trying to find contemporary documentation,

811
00:45:48,239 --> 00:45:50,760
Speaker 1: or at least the earliest documentation of it I could,

812
00:45:50,760 --> 00:45:53,960
Speaker 1: and I could not find that. It makes me wonder

813
00:45:54,040 --> 00:45:56,759
Speaker 1: how modern writers know this, but I assumed that the

814
00:45:56,800 --> 00:45:59,680
Speaker 1: British Library bloggers have their their history sorted out, so

815
00:45:59,719 --> 00:46:02,840
Speaker 1: I'll try rust him on this one. So the wedding

816
00:46:02,880 --> 00:46:05,680
Speaker 1: of King Henry the seventh. King Henry was also known

817
00:46:05,719 --> 00:46:09,160
Speaker 1: as Henry Tudor, and his assent to the throne was

818
00:46:09,200 --> 00:46:12,560
Speaker 1: the ultimate conclusion of the Wars of the Roses, where

819
00:46:12,600 --> 00:46:16,800
Speaker 1: the Houses of Lancaster and York had struggled for control

820
00:46:16,840 --> 00:46:19,799
Speaker 1: of England for like three decades. This is chronicled with

821
00:46:19,920 --> 00:46:24,400
Speaker 1: some propagandistic slant in Shakespeare's play Richard the Third. Of course,

822
00:46:24,520 --> 00:46:27,320
Speaker 1: Richard the Third was the last of the York kings.

823
00:46:28,000 --> 00:46:31,120
Speaker 1: Henry had some kind of roughly thirty seventh in line

824
00:46:31,160 --> 00:46:34,879
Speaker 1: succession claim to the throne through the line of Lancaster,

825
00:46:35,560 --> 00:46:38,920
Speaker 1: but he really came to power through some political maneuvering

826
00:46:39,000 --> 00:46:42,279
Speaker 1: and military victory, so his claim was of course through

827
00:46:42,320 --> 00:46:45,120
Speaker 1: the Lancaster line. But he apparently got in position for

828
00:46:45,200 --> 00:46:49,840
Speaker 1: power by swearing to marry Elizabeth of York, which would

829
00:46:49,960 --> 00:46:53,280
Speaker 1: unite the two houses if he was victorious and Richard.

830
00:46:53,560 --> 00:46:56,759
Speaker 1: Richard the third had enemies within his own house, so

831
00:46:56,880 --> 00:46:59,960
Speaker 1: with some French support, Henry the seventh landed in Wale

832
00:47:00,160 --> 00:47:03,440
Speaker 1: in fourteen eighty five. He led an army against Richard's

833
00:47:03,480 --> 00:47:06,759
Speaker 1: power center in London. Richard took an army out to

834
00:47:06,840 --> 00:47:10,360
Speaker 1: meet him. Henry and Richard's forces fought a conclusive battle

835
00:47:10,400 --> 00:47:14,000
Speaker 1: at Bosworth Field on August twenty two, fourteen eighty five,

836
00:47:14,320 --> 00:47:17,479
Speaker 1: where Richard was killed in the fighting, allegedly while trying

837
00:47:17,520 --> 00:47:20,480
Speaker 1: to like strike deep behind enemy ranks and kill Henry

838
00:47:20,560 --> 00:47:23,879
Speaker 1: himself to in the war immediately, and Richard the Third

839
00:47:24,000 --> 00:47:27,239
Speaker 1: was apparently the last English king killed in battle. So

840
00:47:27,280 --> 00:47:30,240
Speaker 1: after the battle Henry is victorious, He's like, well, okay,

841
00:47:30,280 --> 00:47:33,280
Speaker 1: you know, I've basically got a claim to the throne

842
00:47:33,320 --> 00:47:36,040
Speaker 1: by succession. I just won in battle, which means God

843
00:47:36,120 --> 00:47:39,600
Speaker 1: must want me to be king. So Henry was crowned

844
00:47:39,680 --> 00:47:42,919
Speaker 1: at the end of October fourteen eighty five, and true

845
00:47:42,920 --> 00:47:45,960
Speaker 1: to his promise, he married Elizabeth of York in January

846
00:47:46,040 --> 00:47:49,799
Speaker 1: fourteen eighty six. And this marriage was of greater than

847
00:47:49,920 --> 00:47:53,359
Speaker 1: normal political importance. It was more than just the pageantry

848
00:47:53,400 --> 00:47:56,200
Speaker 1: of a of a royal wedding, it was in some

849
00:47:56,239 --> 00:48:00,319
Speaker 1: ways the symbolic extinguishment of a dynastic war that had

850
00:48:00,360 --> 00:48:03,160
Speaker 1: been raging for about thirty years. So why not a

851
00:48:03,160 --> 00:48:07,560
Speaker 1: little extra celebration, why not blow something up right. Ray's

852
00:48:07,600 --> 00:48:11,759
Speaker 1: blog post also points to a fourteenth century manuscript known

853
00:48:12,360 --> 00:48:17,200
Speaker 1: as the British Library royal Ms twelve by five. This

854
00:48:17,320 --> 00:48:21,799
Speaker 1: is primarily a medical text. It talks about bodily humors,

855
00:48:21,800 --> 00:48:27,320
Speaker 1: herbal medicines, astrology, but it's got a recipe for fireworks,

856
00:48:27,520 --> 00:48:33,799
Speaker 1: specifically fireworks, rockets, and the burning glass. And according to Ray,

857
00:48:33,920 --> 00:48:36,719
Speaker 1: the opening to the section on the recipes for combustion

858
00:48:37,280 --> 00:48:42,040
Speaker 1: begins with references quote to Greek fire, an incendiary weapon

859
00:48:42,120 --> 00:48:45,840
Speaker 1: first used by Byzantine forces against Arabic naval fleet steering

860
00:48:45,920 --> 00:48:49,759
Speaker 1: sieges on Constantinople in the late seventh century. So I

861
00:48:49,800 --> 00:48:53,239
Speaker 1: think it's very interesting that a fourteenth century writer in

862
00:48:53,320 --> 00:48:56,719
Speaker 1: English would say, Okay, here's a recipe for making fun

863
00:48:56,920 --> 00:49:00,719
Speaker 1: recreational fireworks, but let's introduce it by talking about this

864
00:49:00,880 --> 00:49:03,960
Speaker 1: terror weapon. Yeah, yeah, the terror weapon of the of

865
00:49:04,000 --> 00:49:06,920
Speaker 1: the Byzantines, which we which we have an entire episode

866
00:49:06,960 --> 00:49:09,520
Speaker 1: on in the vault. If anyone wants to listen to it,

867
00:49:09,719 --> 00:49:12,799
Speaker 1: but apparently because of the danger posed by fireworks. The

868
00:49:12,840 --> 00:49:17,040
Speaker 1: manuscript of companies it's recipes with protective magic spells that

869
00:49:17,120 --> 00:49:21,160
Speaker 1: you can use against the fire. Quote. The protective charms

870
00:49:21,200 --> 00:49:25,879
Speaker 1: against fire invokes St. Column Seal also known as Columba

871
00:49:26,120 --> 00:49:30,600
Speaker 1: or column Kill, and St Agatha for protection. St Agatha

872
00:49:30,680 --> 00:49:36,359
Speaker 1: was a patron saint against fire, lightning, and volcanic eruptions. Uh.

873
00:49:36,400 --> 00:49:40,080
Speaker 1: Protective charms may seem unorthodox to us today, but they

874
00:49:40,080 --> 00:49:43,200
Speaker 1: were often employed in the same manner as medical recipes

875
00:49:43,239 --> 00:49:46,000
Speaker 1: and religious prayers. And this is something we've talked about

876
00:49:46,000 --> 00:49:48,560
Speaker 1: on the show before. How In in late medieval and

877
00:49:48,600 --> 00:49:51,920
Speaker 1: early modern writing in Europe, there's a lot of thinking

878
00:49:51,960 --> 00:49:56,319
Speaker 1: that just blends magic and naturalistic or scientific knowledge, as

879
00:49:56,320 --> 00:49:59,200
Speaker 1: if there were no real difference between them. You know,

880
00:49:59,280 --> 00:50:02,160
Speaker 1: here's how to make an explosive powder. Here's a magic

881
00:50:02,200 --> 00:50:05,720
Speaker 1: spell to cure warts. Here's a recipe for toothpaste. Here's

882
00:50:05,719 --> 00:50:08,600
Speaker 1: how to know if a witch is giving you a rash.

883
00:50:08,719 --> 00:50:11,760
Speaker 1: There's another British Library manuscript profile I wanted to mention,

884
00:50:11,840 --> 00:50:16,080
Speaker 1: this one by curator Maddie smith In, and this is

885
00:50:16,120 --> 00:50:20,480
Speaker 1: of a seventeenth century book called Pyrotechnica written by a

886
00:50:20,640 --> 00:50:24,440
Speaker 1: gunner named John Babbington. And it's the first book in

887
00:50:24,520 --> 00:50:28,040
Speaker 1: English that is known to be entirely about how to

888
00:50:28,080 --> 00:50:32,120
Speaker 1: make fireworks for fun. It's entirely a book about recreational fireworks.

889
00:50:32,360 --> 00:50:35,000
Speaker 1: Now again, this is a much later work, maybe almost

890
00:50:35,080 --> 00:50:38,719
Speaker 1: three hundred years later than the previous manuscript. It is

891
00:50:38,880 --> 00:50:44,160
Speaker 1: widely attested that Queen Elizabeth the First of England loved fireworks.

892
00:50:44,280 --> 00:50:46,839
Speaker 1: And note that Queen Elizabeth the First is different from

893
00:50:46,840 --> 00:50:50,000
Speaker 1: Elizabeth of Yorke, who married Henry the seventh. Queen Elizabeth

894
00:50:50,040 --> 00:50:52,879
Speaker 1: the First ruled from fifteen fifty eight until her death

895
00:50:52,880 --> 00:50:56,400
Speaker 1: in sixteen oh three. I was looking for examples of

896
00:50:56,440 --> 00:50:59,600
Speaker 1: her legendary love of fireworks, and I came across a

897
00:50:59,719 --> 00:51:04,160
Speaker 1: letter are written by a man named Lanaham describing the

898
00:51:04,239 --> 00:51:09,240
Speaker 1: Queen's visit to Kinnilworth Castle in fifty five, and Lanaham

899
00:51:09,360 --> 00:51:13,320
Speaker 1: describes it like this quote. On the Sunday night, after

900
00:51:13,360 --> 00:51:16,120
Speaker 1: a warning piece or two, there was a blaze of

901
00:51:16,239 --> 00:51:22,319
Speaker 1: burning darts flying to and fro beams of stars, correscount streams,

902
00:51:22,360 --> 00:51:26,759
Speaker 1: and hail of fire sparks, lightnings of wildfire on the

903
00:51:26,800 --> 00:51:31,160
Speaker 1: water and on the land, flight and shot of thunderbolts

904
00:51:31,200 --> 00:51:36,040
Speaker 1: all with such continuance, terror and vehemence. The heavens thundered,

905
00:51:36,200 --> 00:51:39,840
Speaker 1: the water surged, and the earth shook. Oh man, that's

906
00:51:40,080 --> 00:51:42,840
Speaker 1: that's that's that's a great description. Shades of deep purple,

907
00:51:42,960 --> 00:51:45,360
Speaker 1: but a great description. Well, you know, it doesn't it

908
00:51:45,400 --> 00:51:49,400
Speaker 1: doesn't sound fun. It sounds really scary. Yeah, well, I

909
00:51:49,440 --> 00:51:53,160
Speaker 1: mean that's that. Those were my earliest experiences of fireworks,

910
00:51:53,200 --> 00:51:56,440
Speaker 1: just being terrified. So, uh, you know, feeling a sense

911
00:51:56,440 --> 00:51:59,680
Speaker 1: of care or safe care is kind of part of it, right, Yeah,

912
00:51:59,680 --> 00:52:03,480
Speaker 1: that might be true. Of course, Shakespeare mentions fireworks in

913
00:52:03,520 --> 00:52:05,279
Speaker 1: a number of his plays, or at least in one

914
00:52:05,360 --> 00:52:08,560
Speaker 1: or two plays. There's there's a scene in Love's Labor's Lost, uh,

915
00:52:09,000 --> 00:52:11,279
Speaker 1: where a character says, quote, the King would have me

916
00:52:11,360 --> 00:52:15,840
Speaker 1: present the Princess sweet Chuck with some delightful ostentation or

917
00:52:15,920 --> 00:52:21,120
Speaker 1: show or pageant or antique or firework. And apparently Queen

918
00:52:21,120 --> 00:52:25,480
Speaker 1: Elizabeth liked fireworks so much that she commissioned a lord

919
00:52:25,560 --> 00:52:29,320
Speaker 1: of fireworks to be in charge of the whole process

920
00:52:29,360 --> 00:52:31,560
Speaker 1: that would come to be known as the fire Master

921
00:52:31,680 --> 00:52:36,200
Speaker 1: of England, whose assistance were called green men because they

922
00:52:36,200 --> 00:52:39,240
Speaker 1: wore hats made out of leaves to protect their heads

923
00:52:39,320 --> 00:52:43,680
Speaker 1: from fire and sparks. So Queen Elizabeth had a pyromancer.

924
00:52:45,840 --> 00:52:48,520
Speaker 1: That's awesome, and they're running about in these uh in

925
00:52:48,800 --> 00:52:51,359
Speaker 1: these green hats but you know, made out of like

926
00:52:51,600 --> 00:52:55,400
Speaker 1: green leaves. I mean that sounds very elvin. That reminds

927
00:52:55,440 --> 00:52:57,759
Speaker 1: me of what we discussed in the past about these

928
00:52:57,960 --> 00:53:00,759
Speaker 1: taboos against wearing green because that is the color of

929
00:53:00,800 --> 00:53:04,680
Speaker 1: the fairies. Yeah, totally. I think those ones we talked

930
00:53:04,680 --> 00:53:08,000
Speaker 1: about in the past, for specifically uh superstition about young

931
00:53:08,040 --> 00:53:10,719
Speaker 1: women wearing them or they would make the fairy princess

932
00:53:10,800 --> 00:53:13,920
Speaker 1: is jealous. But yeah, I mean, I don't know, if

933
00:53:13,920 --> 00:53:16,919
Speaker 1: you're already dealing with fire and fireworks for a living,

934
00:53:16,920 --> 00:53:20,240
Speaker 1: why not put some leaves on your head. But so, anyway,

935
00:53:20,239 --> 00:53:24,560
Speaker 1: back to this book Pyrotechnic by Babbington. It describes how

936
00:53:24,560 --> 00:53:27,600
Speaker 1: to make a number of regular shell style fireworks of

937
00:53:27,640 --> 00:53:29,799
Speaker 1: the kind we were talking about earlier, and how to

938
00:53:29,840 --> 00:53:33,400
Speaker 1: achieve different colors. Quote, for stars of a blue color,

939
00:53:33,520 --> 00:53:38,280
Speaker 1: a combination of gunpowder, saltpeter and sulfur VIV did the trick.

940
00:53:39,040 --> 00:53:43,840
Speaker 1: He then progresses to making silver and gold rain firework

941
00:53:43,920 --> 00:53:48,200
Speaker 1: wheels and fizz gigs. A fringe firework that fizzled before

942
00:53:48,239 --> 00:53:51,480
Speaker 1: it exploded. Fizz gig, yeah, fiz gig like like in

943
00:53:51,520 --> 00:53:55,239
Speaker 1: the Dark Crystal. But beyond that, Babington goes on in

944
00:53:55,280 --> 00:53:58,640
Speaker 1: his book to give instructions for these elaborate displays, such

945
00:53:58,680 --> 00:54:03,520
Speaker 1: as the drag in the Dragon was a giant wooden

946
00:54:03,719 --> 00:54:06,840
Speaker 1: frame in the shape of a winged serpent that was

947
00:54:07,000 --> 00:54:10,600
Speaker 1: filled and ornamented with all kinds of combustibles that would

948
00:54:10,600 --> 00:54:14,440
Speaker 1: make it breathe fire and spark with fury. And one

949
00:54:14,480 --> 00:54:18,040
Speaker 1: popular way of doing this dragon demonstration was to have

950
00:54:18,160 --> 00:54:21,799
Speaker 1: both a wooden dragon crammed with fireworks and either a

951
00:54:21,960 --> 00:54:25,560
Speaker 1: rival dragon or a figure of St. George, and then

952
00:54:25,600 --> 00:54:28,680
Speaker 1: you would make them fight. Uh so this is from

953
00:54:28,760 --> 00:54:32,880
Speaker 1: Smith quote in Pyrotechnica, Babington instructs the reader to strap

954
00:54:32,960 --> 00:54:35,920
Speaker 1: the dragon and St. George together so that when a

955
00:54:35,920 --> 00:54:40,200
Speaker 1: wheel is turned quote, they will run furiously at each other.

956
00:54:40,719 --> 00:54:44,120
Speaker 1: They had to be well balanced, as otherwise quote they

957
00:54:44,120 --> 00:54:47,000
Speaker 1: would turn their heels upward, which would be a great

958
00:54:47,080 --> 00:54:50,480
Speaker 1: disgrace to the work and the workman. It sounds like

959
00:54:50,520 --> 00:54:53,120
Speaker 1: more of a disgrace that that sounds maybe like an

960
00:54:53,120 --> 00:54:56,640
Speaker 1: extreme safety hazard. You included a shot here of a

961
00:54:56,680 --> 00:54:59,520
Speaker 1: woodcut illustration from this book, and uh, I have to

962
00:54:59,520 --> 00:55:02,719
Speaker 1: say that, combined with the description this is pure burning man,

963
00:55:02,840 --> 00:55:05,319
Speaker 1: like this is the exact spirit of that, sort of

964
00:55:05,360 --> 00:55:10,759
Speaker 1: like a large scale pyro technical display. Yeah, exactly, this

965
00:55:10,800 --> 00:55:14,120
Speaker 1: is Elizabethan burning man. But so there's a big question here, right,

966
00:55:14,160 --> 00:55:18,120
Speaker 1: So if if fireworks were probably invented in China and

967
00:55:18,200 --> 00:55:22,439
Speaker 1: we're super popular with the English monarchy by the fifteen hundreds,

968
00:55:22,440 --> 00:55:24,720
Speaker 1: how did they make that journey? How did they get

969
00:55:24,840 --> 00:55:29,560
Speaker 1: from China to Europe and specifically early modern England. Well,

970
00:55:29,600 --> 00:55:33,480
Speaker 1: it turns out that the first known European to describe

971
00:55:33,520 --> 00:55:39,640
Speaker 1: the creation of black powder was Dr Mirabilis himself, Roger Bacon. Uh,

972
00:55:39,760 --> 00:55:44,440
Speaker 1: the thirteenth century English philosopher proto scientist in Franciscan friar

973
00:55:44,960 --> 00:55:49,360
Speaker 1: and Dr Mirabilis I think it means technically wonderful teacher

974
00:55:49,360 --> 00:55:50,960
Speaker 1: in Latin, but I like to think of him as

975
00:55:51,080 --> 00:55:56,520
Speaker 1: doctor Wonderful. So Roger Bacon was born somewhere in southwest England,

976
00:55:56,560 --> 00:55:59,440
Speaker 1: either I think in Somerset or in Gloucestershire, between the

977
00:55:59,520 --> 00:56:03,680
Speaker 1: years alve fourteen and twelve twenty. More recent sources places

978
00:56:03,680 --> 00:56:07,160
Speaker 1: birth I think around twelve nineteen or twelve twenty, and

979
00:56:07,280 --> 00:56:10,239
Speaker 1: he became a brother of the Franciscan order and a

980
00:56:10,360 --> 00:56:14,040
Speaker 1: scholar of great esteem and controversy. In the modern day,

981
00:56:14,080 --> 00:56:17,440
Speaker 1: he has this reputation for being an early advocate of

982
00:56:17,480 --> 00:56:22,520
Speaker 1: something approaching scientific empiricism, the study of nature through observation

983
00:56:23,120 --> 00:56:26,560
Speaker 1: rather than just deductive principles about the divine order. Like

984
00:56:26,920 --> 00:56:29,840
Speaker 1: maybe you know what if Aristotle says something about nature

985
00:56:30,000 --> 00:56:32,840
Speaker 1: and then you do an experiment and discover that Aristotle

986
00:56:32,960 --> 00:56:35,080
Speaker 1: is wrong, I think a lot of people might have

987
00:56:35,239 --> 00:56:37,600
Speaker 1: the tendency to say, like, well, you know, you must

988
00:56:37,600 --> 00:56:42,960
Speaker 1: have done some throng. Aristotle's probably right, aristotles above reproach right, yeah. Um.

989
00:56:43,160 --> 00:56:48,440
Speaker 1: So Bacon studied and wrote on language, on mathematics, on alchemy, astronomy,

990
00:56:48,480 --> 00:56:51,760
Speaker 1: and optics. You might remember in our Camera Obscura episode

991
00:56:51,760 --> 00:56:55,040
Speaker 1: of Invention we talked about how Bacon had read the

992
00:56:55,080 --> 00:56:59,480
Speaker 1: works of the eleventh century Arab scholar Ibn al Haytham,

993
00:56:59,520 --> 00:57:02,160
Speaker 1: who just scribed the principle of a pinhole camera for

994
00:57:02,239 --> 00:57:06,160
Speaker 1: projecting images into a dark room, and Bacon picked up

995
00:57:06,160 --> 00:57:09,600
Speaker 1: on this and conducted experiments based on al Haytham's writings.

996
00:57:09,600 --> 00:57:13,040
Speaker 1: He apparently built or at least used a camera obscurity

997
00:57:13,160 --> 00:57:16,640
Speaker 1: chamber for the purpose of safely observing solar eclipses in

998
00:57:16,720 --> 00:57:20,480
Speaker 1: his lifetime. But he also described the use of spectacles

999
00:57:20,520 --> 00:57:23,360
Speaker 1: based on glass lenses, which were not yet in wide

1000
00:57:23,480 --> 00:57:26,760
Speaker 1: use at the time. Uh, He conducted alchemy experiments, and

1001
00:57:26,800 --> 00:57:29,680
Speaker 1: he speculated on the idea of a flying machine. He

1002
00:57:29,760 --> 00:57:32,320
Speaker 1: kind of had a reputation as something of a wonder

1003
00:57:32,360 --> 00:57:35,400
Speaker 1: worker or a wizard. And again this is something that

1004
00:57:35,560 --> 00:57:38,720
Speaker 1: wasn't unheard of for curious scholars of the medieval and

1005
00:57:38,760 --> 00:57:43,000
Speaker 1: early modern period that the doctor Faustus kind of image Robert.

1006
00:57:43,040 --> 00:57:45,640
Speaker 1: You might remember that one of the earliest theories on

1007
00:57:45,680 --> 00:57:50,560
Speaker 1: the authorship of the Voyage Manuscript attributes the manuscript Roger Bacon.

1008
00:57:51,000 --> 00:57:53,560
Speaker 1: Though I don't think we ever found any good evidence

1009
00:57:53,560 --> 00:57:56,480
Speaker 1: supporting this claim. It seemed more like people just might

1010
00:57:56,520 --> 00:57:58,960
Speaker 1: have thought, well, who's some messed up wizard who could

1011
00:57:59,000 --> 00:58:02,040
Speaker 1: have created this weird book. I think the dating of

1012
00:58:02,040 --> 00:58:05,600
Speaker 1: the actual materials put put the book as much later

1013
00:58:05,760 --> 00:58:08,960
Speaker 1: than than Bacon's life. Yeah, I think if you could

1014
00:58:09,000 --> 00:58:10,760
Speaker 1: make a better case for John dead, and you could

1015
00:58:10,800 --> 00:58:16,080
Speaker 1: for Bacon. Right. But Bacon really did apparently advocate experimentalism,

1016
00:58:16,080 --> 00:58:18,240
Speaker 1: though this doesn't mean he was the kind of like

1017
00:58:18,320 --> 00:58:22,480
Speaker 1: skeptic materialist naturalist you might imagine today. It seems he

1018
00:58:22,520 --> 00:58:26,960
Speaker 1: advocated an empirical or experimental approach to both natural science

1019
00:58:27,000 --> 00:58:29,880
Speaker 1: and alchemy and magic, which you know, I can see

1020
00:58:29,880 --> 00:58:32,240
Speaker 1: as that might have been a reasonable mindset if you

1021
00:58:32,280 --> 00:58:35,960
Speaker 1: were living in thirteenth century England. But anyway, he produced

1022
00:58:36,000 --> 00:58:40,560
Speaker 1: some important encyclopedias of learning, beginning with his Opus Majis

1023
00:58:40,800 --> 00:58:44,439
Speaker 1: uh and following with some other I think other works

1024
00:58:44,480 --> 00:58:48,120
Speaker 1: that were called like Opus Lesser or Opus tertiary. Uh.

1025
00:58:48,160 --> 00:58:50,960
Speaker 1: So where does the gunpowder come in? Well, in the

1026
00:58:50,960 --> 00:58:54,000
Speaker 1: twelve forties and a couple of his major works, Bacon

1027
00:58:54,120 --> 00:58:57,520
Speaker 1: just straight up described a recipe for making gunpowder as

1028
00:58:57,560 --> 00:58:59,640
Speaker 1: seemingly out of nowhere. So I'm going to side a

1029
00:58:59,680 --> 00:59:03,800
Speaker 1: passage from the scholar Joseph Needham's work on Bacon and

1030
00:59:03,880 --> 00:59:06,720
Speaker 1: gunpowder in in a in a book called Science and

1031
00:59:06,760 --> 00:59:11,600
Speaker 1: Civilization in China from Cambridge University Press, nineteen seven, where

1032
00:59:11,640 --> 00:59:16,080
Speaker 1: he combines a couple of nearly identical passages about gunpowder

1033
00:59:16,160 --> 00:59:21,360
Speaker 1: from Bacon's Opus Majis or Mayis and Opus Tertium together.

1034
00:59:21,520 --> 00:59:25,000
Speaker 1: But first we should look at how Bacon introduces this section,

1035
00:59:25,440 --> 00:59:29,720
Speaker 1: which is he talks about Greek fire. He writes, certain

1036
00:59:29,800 --> 00:59:33,280
Speaker 1: of these work by contact only, and so destroy life.

1037
00:59:33,840 --> 00:59:37,560
Speaker 1: Malta or naptha, which is a kind of bitumen plentiful

1038
00:59:37,600 --> 00:59:40,800
Speaker 1: in the world, when projected upon a man in armor,

1039
00:59:40,920 --> 00:59:45,880
Speaker 1: burns him up. Similarly, yellow petroleum i e. Oil produced

1040
00:59:45,960 --> 00:59:50,320
Speaker 1: from the rocks, when properly prepared or distilled, burns everything

1041
00:59:50,320 --> 00:59:53,800
Speaker 1: it meets by a consuming fire, not extinguishable by water,

1042
00:59:54,280 --> 00:59:58,440
Speaker 1: and only with great difficulty by other things. Certain inventions

1043
00:59:58,440 --> 01:00:01,440
Speaker 1: disturbed the hearing to such degree that if they are

1044
01:00:01,480 --> 01:00:05,000
Speaker 1: set off suddenly at night with sufficient skill, neither cities

1045
01:00:05,040 --> 01:00:09,080
Speaker 1: nor armies can endure them. No thunderclap can compare with

1046
01:00:09,120 --> 01:00:13,200
Speaker 1: such terrifying noises, nor lightning playing among the clouds, with

1047
01:00:13,240 --> 01:00:17,960
Speaker 1: such frightening flashes. And then um, and then he goes on.

1048
01:00:18,080 --> 01:00:21,640
Speaker 1: So this is the combined two passages about gunpowder itself.

1049
01:00:22,600 --> 01:00:25,280
Speaker 1: We have an example of these things that act on

1050
01:00:25,320 --> 01:00:29,680
Speaker 1: the senses in the sound and fire of that children's toy,

1051
01:00:29,720 --> 01:00:32,320
Speaker 1: which is made in many diverse parts of the world

1052
01:00:32,800 --> 01:00:36,280
Speaker 1: i e. A device no bigger than one's thumb. From

1053
01:00:36,280 --> 01:00:40,320
Speaker 1: the violence of that salt called Saltpeter, together with sulfur

1054
01:00:40,480 --> 01:00:44,960
Speaker 1: and willow charcoal combined into a powder so horrible a

1055
01:00:45,040 --> 01:00:47,880
Speaker 1: sound is made by the bursting of a thing so small,

1056
01:00:48,440 --> 01:00:51,520
Speaker 1: no more than a bit of parchment containing it, that

1057
01:00:51,600 --> 01:00:54,800
Speaker 1: we find the ear assaulted by a noise exceeding the

1058
01:00:54,880 --> 01:00:58,240
Speaker 1: roar of strong thunder, and to flash brighter than the

1059
01:00:58,240 --> 01:01:02,440
Speaker 1: most brilliant lightning, especially if one has taken unawares. This

1060
01:01:02,680 --> 01:01:06,360
Speaker 1: terrible flash is very alarming. If an instrument of large

1061
01:01:06,400 --> 01:01:09,680
Speaker 1: size were used, no one could withstand the noise and

1062
01:01:09,760 --> 01:01:13,520
Speaker 1: blinding light, And if the instrument were made of solid material,

1063
01:01:13,800 --> 01:01:17,120
Speaker 1: the violence of the explosion would be much greater. I

1064
01:01:17,160 --> 01:01:19,200
Speaker 1: love this, and there are aspects of it. Maybe sound

1065
01:01:19,240 --> 01:01:23,160
Speaker 1: like an overstatement of the power of a simple firework,

1066
01:01:23,280 --> 01:01:26,040
Speaker 1: but he does get at the heart of it here. Well, yeah,

1067
01:01:26,080 --> 01:01:28,800
Speaker 1: so this This is Bacon in this work in the

1068
01:01:28,840 --> 01:01:32,960
Speaker 1: middle of the thirteenth century, describing a totally accurate recipe

1069
01:01:33,000 --> 01:01:35,520
Speaker 1: for making an explosive charge. Remember, he's got all of

1070
01:01:35,560 --> 01:01:38,240
Speaker 1: the ingredients we talked about in the chemistry section earlier.

1071
01:01:38,520 --> 01:01:41,560
Speaker 1: He's got the fuel there, he's got the sulfur, he's

1072
01:01:41,560 --> 01:01:44,200
Speaker 1: got the saltpeter as the oxidizer. He says, you grind

1073
01:01:44,240 --> 01:01:46,440
Speaker 1: them together, you make a powder out of them, and

1074
01:01:46,480 --> 01:01:48,360
Speaker 1: that's how you get this charge. And then of course

1075
01:01:48,360 --> 01:01:51,240
Speaker 1: you pack it into to a roll of parchment, he says,

1076
01:01:51,560 --> 01:01:54,920
Speaker 1: which parchment, being a rather expensive material, also seems like

1077
01:01:55,160 --> 01:01:57,040
Speaker 1: maybe not a great use for it. But I don't

1078
01:01:57,040 --> 01:01:58,960
Speaker 1: know what else would you use at the time, I guess,

1079
01:01:59,520 --> 01:02:02,720
Speaker 1: but he describes it as some kind of pre existing

1080
01:02:02,920 --> 01:02:06,439
Speaker 1: children's toy without saying where or when this toy would

1081
01:02:06,440 --> 01:02:10,640
Speaker 1: have been observed, and ends with the unmistakable observation that

1082
01:02:10,760 --> 01:02:14,640
Speaker 1: this combustible powder could obviously be used for violence, could

1083
01:02:14,680 --> 01:02:18,920
Speaker 1: be used in warfare. So a lot of historians claim

1084
01:02:19,000 --> 01:02:21,560
Speaker 1: that this is the first time knowledge of black powder

1085
01:02:21,640 --> 01:02:25,400
Speaker 1: is acknowledged anywhere in Europe. But where did Bacon get

1086
01:02:25,400 --> 01:02:27,920
Speaker 1: this idea from. He doesn't claim to have come up

1087
01:02:27,920 --> 01:02:31,000
Speaker 1: with it himself. Instead, he speaks of this toy from

1088
01:02:31,120 --> 01:02:34,560
Speaker 1: other parts of the world without saying where. So there's

1089
01:02:34,560 --> 01:02:38,400
Speaker 1: an interesting question of cross fertilization of ideas here. Uh

1090
01:02:38,480 --> 01:02:41,680
Speaker 1: Needham Joseph Needham, in his book argues that there is

1091
01:02:41,760 --> 01:02:46,440
Speaker 1: ample reason for thinking that Chinese firecrackers and general explosive

1092
01:02:46,520 --> 01:02:49,600
Speaker 1: chemistry would have made their way back to Europe by

1093
01:02:49,640 --> 01:02:53,400
Speaker 1: around the time Bacon was writing uh so Needham rights quote.

1094
01:02:53,680 --> 01:02:57,160
Speaker 1: This description inescapably suggests to us that a sample of

1095
01:02:57,240 --> 01:03:01,200
Speaker 1: Chinese crackers had come into Roger Bacon's possession and that

1096
01:03:01,280 --> 01:03:05,320
Speaker 1: he knew what the constituents of the mixture were inside them.

1097
01:03:05,360 --> 01:03:08,800
Speaker 1: By twelve sixty seven, that would have been perfectly possible

1098
01:03:09,160 --> 01:03:12,000
Speaker 1: for his fellow friars had been traveling back and forth

1099
01:03:12,080 --> 01:03:15,480
Speaker 1: between Western Europe and the Mongol Court at Kara Koran

1100
01:03:16,000 --> 01:03:19,640
Speaker 1: since twelve forty five, when the Franciscan John of Plano

1101
01:03:19,800 --> 01:03:23,760
Speaker 1: Caprini had been sent as an envoy from Innocent the Fourth,

1102
01:03:23,840 --> 01:03:27,400
Speaker 1: that's Pope Innocent the Fourth to the Great Khan Uh.

1103
01:03:27,440 --> 01:03:31,440
Speaker 1: And then he he documents plenty of other recorded instances

1104
01:03:31,480 --> 01:03:35,160
Speaker 1: of of Franciscans and Dominicans and other Europeans traveling back

1105
01:03:35,200 --> 01:03:38,800
Speaker 1: and forth Uh to China to the Mongol Court, and

1106
01:03:39,000 --> 01:03:42,320
Speaker 1: says that there's just really no problem imagining that someone

1107
01:03:42,680 --> 01:03:46,320
Speaker 1: maybe maybe knowing of Roger Bacon and saying, hey, he's

1108
01:03:46,360 --> 01:03:49,400
Speaker 1: this kind of like out there wizard guy. He he

1109
01:03:49,440 --> 01:03:52,200
Speaker 1: would enjoy a chemical curiosity from the other side of

1110
01:03:52,200 --> 01:03:55,600
Speaker 1: the world. Let's bring some firecrackers back for for doctor

1111
01:03:55,640 --> 01:03:57,919
Speaker 1: Wonderful to look at you now, this would make perfect sense.

1112
01:03:57,920 --> 01:04:00,840
Speaker 1: Everything lines lines up here um the Chinese to the

1113
01:04:00,880 --> 01:04:05,680
Speaker 1: Mongols and then via these uh, these these traveling um

1114
01:04:06,160 --> 01:04:09,320
Speaker 1: Uh clergyman back to Europe. But I would say it

1115
01:04:09,360 --> 01:04:13,320
Speaker 1: also seems possible that firecracker chemistry could have entered late

1116
01:04:13,360 --> 01:04:16,200
Speaker 1: medieval Europe through the Arab world, which was a conduit

1117
01:04:16,360 --> 01:04:19,760
Speaker 1: for a lot of scientific and technological knowledge from both

1118
01:04:19,800 --> 01:04:22,479
Speaker 1: farther East stand from the Arab world itself, but also

1119
01:04:22,560 --> 01:04:24,800
Speaker 1: from the lost libraries of antiquity that you know, a

1120
01:04:24,800 --> 01:04:27,600
Speaker 1: lot of knowledge came back into Europe that way. Yeah,

1121
01:04:27,600 --> 01:04:29,000
Speaker 1: And I think that's also where we see more of

1122
01:04:29,040 --> 01:04:33,600
Speaker 1: a direct military stream of ideas from China than down

1123
01:04:33,640 --> 01:04:38,440
Speaker 1: through UH through Central Asia and into the Middle East.

1124
01:04:38,840 --> 01:04:42,480
Speaker 1: And this instance of of Bacon making this first record

1125
01:04:42,560 --> 01:04:46,000
Speaker 1: of of a recipe for gunpowder in Europe is interesting

1126
01:04:46,120 --> 01:04:48,920
Speaker 1: and how it uh feeds into how we should think

1127
01:04:48,960 --> 01:04:51,440
Speaker 1: about the role of Roger Bacon in in the history

1128
01:04:51,480 --> 01:04:56,120
Speaker 1: of science and stuff, because despite his reputation for experimentation,

1129
01:04:56,160 --> 01:04:59,760
Speaker 1: which he did of course support in principle, Bacon's actual

1130
01:05:00,040 --> 01:05:02,520
Speaker 1: gacy in the history of knowledge might just as well

1131
01:05:02,560 --> 01:05:07,840
Speaker 1: be understood as one of voraciousness for sources of learning

1132
01:05:07,960 --> 01:05:11,440
Speaker 1: far and wide, as much as it was for actual experimentation.

1133
01:05:11,480 --> 01:05:14,520
Speaker 1: I mean again, the idea is not that Bacon was

1134
01:05:14,560 --> 01:05:18,600
Speaker 1: doing chemistry experiments and discovered how to make gunpowder. He

1135
01:05:19,400 --> 01:05:23,520
Speaker 1: probably got a firecracker from somewhere that had been made

1136
01:05:23,520 --> 01:05:27,480
Speaker 1: based on Chinese technology, and then either was told or

1137
01:05:27,560 --> 01:05:30,800
Speaker 1: figured out how it worked. But that's a very important

1138
01:05:30,880 --> 01:05:32,760
Speaker 1: role in the history of knowledge as well, just being

1139
01:05:32,840 --> 01:05:35,520
Speaker 1: like a great collector of ideas from anywhere you can

1140
01:05:35,560 --> 01:05:39,160
Speaker 1: get them, that's right. Just simply being exceedingly well read

1141
01:05:39,800 --> 01:05:42,920
Speaker 1: in the time where where relatively few individuals were in

1142
01:05:42,960 --> 01:05:46,840
Speaker 1: the grand scheme of things. Right, So what came of

1143
01:05:46,960 --> 01:05:51,120
Speaker 1: Bacon's publishing on the subject of gunpowder. Well, some sources

1144
01:05:51,160 --> 01:05:55,480
Speaker 1: alleged that later in his life Roger Bacon suffered trouble

1145
01:05:55,560 --> 01:05:58,960
Speaker 1: of the roughly inquisitional sort that he was imprisoned in

1146
01:05:59,000 --> 01:06:01,960
Speaker 1: the late twelve seven these by his brothers in the

1147
01:06:02,000 --> 01:06:05,320
Speaker 1: Franciscan Order. From what I can tell, the earliest record

1148
01:06:05,360 --> 01:06:07,760
Speaker 1: of this imprisonment comes from a work published in the

1149
01:06:07,880 --> 01:06:10,640
Speaker 1: thirteen seventies, so this would have been around a hundred

1150
01:06:10,720 --> 01:06:14,560
Speaker 1: years after the supposed events, called Chronicle of the twenty

1151
01:06:14,560 --> 01:06:18,160
Speaker 1: four Ministers General of the Franciscan's So I think it's

1152
01:06:18,240 --> 01:06:22,240
Speaker 1: not a hundred percent clear that Bacon really was jailed.

1153
01:06:22,560 --> 01:06:26,280
Speaker 1: We don't have an autobiographical account or anything, but it

1154
01:06:26,480 --> 01:06:29,640
Speaker 1: is widely alleged, and if he was in fact thrown

1155
01:06:29,680 --> 01:06:33,440
Speaker 1: into prison, the exact cause of this imprisonment is not clear.

1156
01:06:33,600 --> 01:06:36,440
Speaker 1: I've seen it alleged in materials by the Royal Society

1157
01:06:36,440 --> 01:06:40,440
Speaker 1: of Chemistry in the UK that Bacon's description of and

1158
01:06:40,560 --> 01:06:44,360
Speaker 1: possible experiments with gunpowder were what got him into trouble

1159
01:06:44,400 --> 01:06:47,840
Speaker 1: with the Church, since quote, only God could produce thunder

1160
01:06:47,880 --> 01:06:51,840
Speaker 1: and lightning. But but I haven't really found any evidence

1161
01:06:51,920 --> 01:06:56,120
Speaker 1: that looks very good for this specific technological blasphemy being

1162
01:06:56,160 --> 01:06:59,720
Speaker 1: the cause of his imprisonment. Apparently the historical record is vague.

1163
01:07:00,200 --> 01:07:03,400
Speaker 1: Were told that it was due to something simply translated

1164
01:07:03,440 --> 01:07:08,080
Speaker 1: as suspected novelties in his teachings, and I guess it's

1165
01:07:08,120 --> 01:07:10,320
Speaker 1: not out of the question that this could refer to

1166
01:07:10,680 --> 01:07:14,200
Speaker 1: technology or something like gunpowder, but it could also just

1167
01:07:14,280 --> 01:07:17,320
Speaker 1: refer to heretical religious beliefs having to do with the

1168
01:07:17,400 --> 01:07:20,920
Speaker 1: end of the world and the church modeling itself on

1169
01:07:21,040 --> 01:07:23,800
Speaker 1: the the idea of the poverty of Christ, or it

1170
01:07:23,840 --> 01:07:28,000
Speaker 1: could have to do with reliance on contemporary prophecies or astrology.

1171
01:07:28,440 --> 01:07:29,960
Speaker 1: Just seems like there are a lot of things you

1172
01:07:29,960 --> 01:07:31,880
Speaker 1: could get in trouble, a lot of kinds of thought

1173
01:07:31,920 --> 01:07:34,680
Speaker 1: crime at the time, and it doesn't necessarily need to

1174
01:07:34,680 --> 01:07:37,960
Speaker 1: be gunpowder that got him into trouble, right, Yeah, there there,

1175
01:07:37,960 --> 01:07:43,320
Speaker 1: there's so many other established paths to alleged heresy without

1176
01:07:43,320 --> 01:07:46,520
Speaker 1: having to draw a new line to gunpowder here. But

1177
01:07:46,520 --> 01:07:48,760
Speaker 1: but of course it wasn't long after Bacon's writings that

1178
01:07:48,800 --> 01:07:52,720
Speaker 1: you really start to see, for example, firearm technology being

1179
01:07:52,760 --> 01:07:56,200
Speaker 1: experimented within Europe, so so that this was sort of

1180
01:07:56,240 --> 01:07:59,600
Speaker 1: a a germanal point in the transfer of knowledge about

1181
01:07:59,600 --> 01:08:01,720
Speaker 1: gunpow out or to Europe. And then, of course we've

1182
01:08:01,720 --> 01:08:05,320
Speaker 1: already talked about all the ways that recreational fireworks became

1183
01:08:05,400 --> 01:08:10,120
Speaker 1: popular in the following centuries. It's interesting again we come

1184
01:08:10,120 --> 01:08:12,640
Speaker 1: back to this idea of gunpowder as being one of

1185
01:08:12,680 --> 01:08:14,400
Speaker 1: these prime inventions. We can look at it and we

1186
01:08:14,400 --> 01:08:17,240
Speaker 1: can see, like the way it is used to harm

1187
01:08:17,280 --> 01:08:19,920
Speaker 1: other people, in the way it is used as pure amusement,

1188
01:08:20,439 --> 01:08:23,800
Speaker 1: the dual nature of of invention. Right. But then also

1189
01:08:23,840 --> 01:08:27,120
Speaker 1: we're we're talking about how it travels, and so it

1190
01:08:27,360 --> 01:08:29,719
Speaker 1: seems entirely possible that we're looking in the situation where

1191
01:08:29,880 --> 01:08:33,640
Speaker 1: it is via novelty that the technology more readily travels

1192
01:08:33,680 --> 01:08:36,760
Speaker 1: to the West. Uh. For a number of reasons, one

1193
01:08:36,800 --> 01:08:38,920
Speaker 1: of which being that, uh, you know, a culture is

1194
01:08:38,920 --> 01:08:41,959
Speaker 1: going to be far less willing to share the secrets

1195
01:08:41,960 --> 01:08:46,400
Speaker 1: of its weaponry. Um, but in terms of its mere enjoyments. Uh,

1196
01:08:46,720 --> 01:08:49,680
Speaker 1: that that that may travel a little easier. Yeah, I

1197
01:08:49,760 --> 01:08:52,559
Speaker 1: can totally see that. Uh. You know something that's interesting.

1198
01:08:52,600 --> 01:08:55,799
Speaker 1: I was reading about fireworks in the contemporary world. Obviously,

1199
01:08:55,840 --> 01:08:58,040
Speaker 1: we know that in the United States people tend to

1200
01:08:58,640 --> 01:09:02,120
Speaker 1: use a lot of firecrackers and fireworks around the Independence Day,

1201
01:09:02,160 --> 01:09:05,360
Speaker 1: the fourth of July. But I was reading that even today,

1202
01:09:05,400 --> 01:09:08,760
Speaker 1: the vast majority of the world's fireworks are still made

1203
01:09:08,760 --> 01:09:11,320
Speaker 1: in China. I was reading an article on CNN that

1204
01:09:11,400 --> 01:09:15,960
Speaker 1: reported that as of twenty sixteen, over nine percent of

1205
01:09:16,000 --> 01:09:20,559
Speaker 1: the fireworks used on American Independence Day were manufactured in China.

1206
01:09:20,640 --> 01:09:23,880
Speaker 1: And there's still all kinds of artisans and crafts people

1207
01:09:23,960 --> 01:09:27,560
Speaker 1: working in China that like hand make fireworks. That that

1208
01:09:27,760 --> 01:09:30,960
Speaker 1: is impressive to think about that because generally, when I

1209
01:09:31,000 --> 01:09:34,559
Speaker 1: think of fireworks, I think of the seemingly mass reduced

1210
01:09:34,640 --> 01:09:39,760
Speaker 1: examples that that one finds that fireworks stores and firework tents, right. Yeah,

1211
01:09:39,800 --> 01:09:42,439
Speaker 1: and I'm sure, I'm sure some fireworks are mass produced

1212
01:09:42,439 --> 01:09:45,559
Speaker 1: by a more automated process. But uh, but I was

1213
01:09:45,560 --> 01:09:49,280
Speaker 1: watching some short documentary segments about actually like companies that

1214
01:09:49,360 --> 01:09:52,719
Speaker 1: still just have basically people making them by hand using

1215
01:09:52,800 --> 01:09:57,040
Speaker 1: sort of hand cranked machinery and stuff. Yeah, you certainly

1216
01:09:57,080 --> 01:09:59,880
Speaker 1: don't see any here in the States. At Farmers Marke.

1217
01:10:00,000 --> 01:10:02,560
Speaker 1: It's where someone is like, these are my fireworks. I

1218
01:10:02,640 --> 01:10:05,040
Speaker 1: made these, you can watch me make them. I roll

1219
01:10:05,160 --> 01:10:09,400
Speaker 1: my own Roman candles, etcetera. But maybe I'm just going

1220
01:10:09,400 --> 01:10:11,559
Speaker 1: to the wrong farmers markets. Who knows. No, this is

1221
01:10:11,560 --> 01:10:13,840
Speaker 1: an interesting point you raise. Rachel and I were actually

1222
01:10:13,880 --> 01:10:16,360
Speaker 1: talking about this here at the house, about whether you

1223
01:10:16,360 --> 01:10:19,960
Speaker 1: know you would have like craft fireworks in the same

1224
01:10:19,960 --> 01:10:22,559
Speaker 1: way you see, I don't know so much of an

1225
01:10:22,640 --> 01:10:26,519
Speaker 1: artisanal craft movement with other types of products and food

1226
01:10:26,560 --> 01:10:29,599
Speaker 1: items these days. Yeah, and and would you would one

1227
01:10:29,640 --> 01:10:32,000
Speaker 1: trust that more or less? I feel like my instinct,

1228
01:10:32,000 --> 01:10:35,040
Speaker 1: and maybe this is just by virtue of of just

1229
01:10:35,080 --> 01:10:38,000
Speaker 1: not being um accustomed to it, I feel like I

1230
01:10:38,000 --> 01:10:41,920
Speaker 1: would be suspicious of of handmade fireworks that just some

1231
01:10:42,120 --> 01:10:46,280
Speaker 1: random stranger made. Um, I don't know. And maybe again

1232
01:10:46,320 --> 01:10:49,080
Speaker 1: just because it's something I've I've not encountered before. Personally,

1233
01:10:50,760 --> 01:10:52,439
Speaker 1: I guess it's I want there to be some sort

1234
01:10:52,479 --> 01:10:55,439
Speaker 1: of like factory standard for my explosives. I guess right.

1235
01:10:55,479 --> 01:10:56,880
Speaker 1: You want to You want to know that it's been

1236
01:10:56,880 --> 01:11:00,320
Speaker 1: through the inspections or something. Yeah, and it here that

1237
01:11:00,360 --> 01:11:03,280
Speaker 1: our intuitions sometimes work that way. You think like a

1238
01:11:03,600 --> 01:11:07,880
Speaker 1: mass produced item that seems safer, that seems like, uh,

1239
01:11:08,080 --> 01:11:10,920
Speaker 1: that seems like it's been through a process. I would

1240
01:11:10,960 --> 01:11:13,760
Speaker 1: love to hear from anyone out there who makes their

1241
01:11:13,760 --> 01:11:17,240
Speaker 1: own fireworks or know someone who does, for any insight

1242
01:11:17,320 --> 01:11:20,240
Speaker 1: into this, because just I haven't researched this in full,

1243
01:11:20,320 --> 01:11:23,880
Speaker 1: but just glancing around, it looks like there are advocates

1244
01:11:23,960 --> 01:11:27,960
Speaker 1: out there for making your own fireworks and and and

1245
01:11:28,000 --> 01:11:31,160
Speaker 1: even doing so safely. Um, but this is just a

1246
01:11:31,160 --> 01:11:34,880
Speaker 1: whole world I have no exposure to. Well, quick liability check.

1247
01:11:34,920 --> 01:11:37,880
Speaker 1: We're not advising people to do that. No, no, we

1248
01:11:38,160 --> 01:11:41,320
Speaker 1: are not advising you to make your own fireworks. Just

1249
01:11:41,439 --> 01:11:44,280
Speaker 1: if you are, if you already have knowledge of this world,

1250
01:11:44,880 --> 01:11:46,960
Speaker 1: let us know about it. I would like to learn more.

1251
01:11:47,439 --> 01:11:50,120
Speaker 1: I would not like to to buy any of them, though.

1252
01:11:50,320 --> 01:11:52,040
Speaker 1: You know, what I want to know from an expert

1253
01:11:52,040 --> 01:11:54,960
Speaker 1: on fireworks is whether pump stars or stars that have

1254
01:11:55,040 --> 01:11:57,680
Speaker 1: been pumped using a star pump or not? Yeah, and

1255
01:11:57,680 --> 01:11:59,840
Speaker 1: then how do you make the star pump? Do you have?

1256
01:12:00,040 --> 01:12:02,240
Speaker 1: Do you? Is there something like that made from like

1257
01:12:02,400 --> 01:12:05,599
Speaker 1: residue from pumping a star? I don't know. Can all

1258
01:12:05,600 --> 01:12:09,120
Speaker 1: be interconnected? The star pump sounds like a wonderful science

1259
01:12:09,160 --> 01:12:13,839
Speaker 1: fiction device. It does. Yeah, some sort of crazy Kardashian

1260
01:12:14,040 --> 01:12:19,160
Speaker 1: level to technology bust out the star pump. But anyway,

1261
01:12:19,200 --> 01:12:22,880
Speaker 1: that is it for fireworks for this episode. Hopefully we

1262
01:12:23,200 --> 01:12:26,280
Speaker 1: you know, provided some additional insight into the the the

1263
01:12:26,320 --> 01:12:30,760
Speaker 1: origin of fireworks and how this technology then took off

1264
01:12:30,960 --> 01:12:34,200
Speaker 1: in Western Europe as well. Uh so a little more

1265
01:12:34,200 --> 01:12:36,840
Speaker 1: to think about that. If you find yourself staring up

1266
01:12:36,840 --> 01:12:39,720
Speaker 1: at the sky in the next few months, in the

1267
01:12:39,760 --> 01:12:43,479
Speaker 1: next sometime point over the next year, and watching these

1268
01:12:43,520 --> 01:12:48,280
Speaker 1: various colorful, glittering explosions take place, you know, understanding what

1269
01:12:48,280 --> 01:12:51,000
Speaker 1: what is chemically going on and also what is uh

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Speaker 1: culturally and historically going on before you. In the meantime,

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind that to coach your fancy.

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Speaker 1: That's right, be our star pumps anyway, huge thanks as

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Speaker 1: the present joint f Join Part first five