Blackpowder Intro

[Jay Edward (deceased)]

This is from a Swiss compilation document by Ulrich Bretscher.

The History of Black Powder
- an entirely new view

Introduction: About 20 years ago, I started my first investigations into the history and chemistry of black powder by studying the usual, readily available literature you certainly have consulted too. This due to becoming a member of a muzzle loader club. Annoyed by the repetitive guesswork, suggestions and quotations by authors who quoted other authors, I started to check up some of the original literature, supported by my limited knowledge of Latin and some Chinese. I collected an ever increasing documentation of findings and started to write a book about this. Then, after the arrival of the internet, as a starter, I put this story on my homepage, at first in it's original German version.

Since I feel this paper will be a genuine, new contribution to the real history of black powder and will shed some new light on the topic, I no longer will hide this story from the public and present it now in English.

Definition of black powder

"A mixture of homogenized saltpeter (KNO3) and charcoal (empirical formula C7H4O). Confined into a closed space, this mixture explodes violently if heated up to 400 centigrade. By adding sulphur to this mixture, the ignition temperature is reduced significantly. The mixture containing sulphur develops white smoke versus the sulfurless powder burns near smokeless."

The term "black powder" first appeared about in 1890. Before this it was called "gun powder" or simply "powder". The change of its name became necessary to distinguish it from the recently invented "white powder", as nitro cellulose powder was called before this. It was taken into account, that gun powder actually was dark-gray to dark cafe-brown and not black. The deeply black colour of the today black powder is caused by the graphite coating, used to improve its flow properties and damp resistance.

Key ingredient obviously is saltpeter. The burning of any organic substance is accelerated by adding saltpeter. That's so obvious, the discoverer of saltpeter certainly would have observed this characteristic property of this new substance the same day, too.

Certainly we'll never find out the real discoverers name. But let's see if we can narrow down time and location saltpeter and black powder was discovered.

[Alboy]

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