The Fireworks History

Today, let's talk a little about the Fireworks history.

It all started with the Chinese threwing bamboo pieces into fire to produce explosions.

A batch of Gunpowder:

Later, they invented the Gunpowder (Black Powder), a mixture of Potassium Nitrate (KNO3) - 75%, Charcoal (C) - 15% and Sulphur (S) - 10% near the 9th century and used it primarly in some kind of ancient fire arms like fire arrows, fire lances and hand cannons. The previous bamboo pieces thrown into fire, were now replaced by Gunpowder packed artifacts, later known as Firecrackers and here, the Fireworks shows as we know nowadays started happening. The Chinese believed the bangs caused by their Fireworks were capable of expel evil spirits and give happiness and luck - true or not, if you see a Fireworks show today, you'll certainly feel happy for at least moment!

Years later, explorers and travellers took Gunpowder into Europe and the Italians started adding metal and/or metal salts to the powder, giving it different colors and buring characteristics, making it possible to produce colorful Fireworks and louder explosions.

Some metals and their colors:

Along the years many different colors and effects were developed in distinct countries and cultures, for example, the europeans have the tradition of using cylinder shaped shells (casings) or stick rockets, instead the asiatics (Chinese and Japanse) that use mainly round shaped shells (like balls).

Portuguese/Spanish stick rockets:

Japanese/Chinese round shells:

Maltese/Italian multibreak shells:

That's it, from bamboo to metal produced colors, now we have Fireworks!

In the next posts i will explain about how each of these different shaped Fireworks work.