GUNPOWDER, a composition of nitre, sulphur, and charcoal, mixed together, and usually granulated. This easily takes fire, and when fired it rarifies or expands with great vehemence, by means of its elastic force. It is to this powder that we owe all the effect and action of guns, and ordnance of all sorts, so that fortifica tion, with the modern military art, &c. in a great measure depends upon it.
The invention of gunpowder is ascrib ed by Polydore Virgil to a chemist, who having accidentally put some of his com position in a mortar, and covered it with a stone, it happened to take fire, and blew up the stone. Thevet says, that the per son here spoken of was a monk of Fri bourg, named Constantine Anelzen ; but Belleforet, and other authors, with more probability, hold it to be Bartholdus Schwartz, or the black, who discovered it, as some say, about the year 1320 ; and the first use of it is ascribed to the Vene tians in the year 1380, during the war with the Genoese. But there are earlier accounts of its use, after the accident of Schwartz, as well as before it : for Peter Mexia, in his " Various Readings," men tions, that the Moors being besieged, in 1343, by Alphonsus the Eleventh, King of Castile, discharged a kind of iron mor tars upon them, which made a noise like thunder : and this is seconded by what is related by Don Pedro, Bishop of Leon, in his Chronicle of King Alphonsus, who re duced Toledo, viz. that in a sea combat, between the King of Tunis and the Moor ish King of Seville, about that time, those of Tunis had certain iron tubs or barrels, with which they threw thunderbolts of fire.
Du Cange adds, that there is mention made of gunpowder in the registers of the chambers of accounts in France, as early as the year 1338. But it appears that Roger Bacon knew of gunpowder neat one hundred years before Schwartz was born; M. Dutens carries the antiqui ty of gunpowder still much higher, and refers to the of the ancients themselves for the proof of it. It ap pears too, from many authors and many circumstances, that this composition has been known to the Chinese and Indians for thousands of years.
For some time after the invention of artillery, gunpowder was of a much weak. er composition than that now in use, or that described by Marcus Omens, which was chiefly owing to the weakness of their first pieces. Of twenty-three differ ent compositions, used at different times, and mentioned by Tartaglia in his "Ques. and Inv. lib. 3, ques. 5;" the first, which was the oldest, contained equal parts of the three ingredients. But when guns of modern structure were introduced, gun powder of the same composition as the present came into use. In the time of Tartaglia the cannon powder was made of four parts of nitre, one of sulphur, and one of charcoal ; and the, musket powder of forty-eight parts of nitre, se ven parts of sulphur, and eight parts of charcoal ; or of eighteen parts of nitre, two parts of sulphur, and three parts of charcoal. But the modern composition is six parts of nitre to one of each of the other two ingredients: though Mr. Na pier says, he finds the strength commonly to be greatest when the proportions are, nitre three pounds, charcoal about nine ounces, and sulphur about three ounces. See his paper on gunpowder in the Trans actions of the Royal Irish Academy, vol.
The cannon-powder was in meal, and the musket-powder grained; and it is certain, that the graining of powder, which is a very considerable advantage, is a modern improvement.
To make gunpowder duly, regard is to be had to the purity or goodness of the ingredients, as well as the proportions of them, for the strength of the powder de pends much on that circumstance, and also on the due working or mixing of them together. See NITRE.
These three ingredients in their purest state being procured, long experience has shown that they are then to be mixed to gether in the proportion before mention ed, to have the best effect, viz. three quarters of the composition to be nitre, and the other quarter made up of equal parts of the other two ingredients, or, which is the same thing, six parts nitre, one part sulphur, and one part charcoal.