ABSTRACT
It is di²cult to speak of modern explosives without referring to black powder. ›e discovery of black powder probably precedes its actual use in a systematic fashion by several centuries. Its essential ingredients (potassium nitrate, charcoal, and sulphur) have been available
since ancient times, and chance or deliberate ignition of a mixture of these ingredients may not have been so rare. However, the credit for its systematic use belongs to the Chinese, who packed these mixtures into bamboo tubes and used them as rockets for display and signaling purposes. It took several centuries before black powder became a standard military tool. Even then, the early fourteenth century cannons consisted simply of wooden tubes ‡lled with black powder charge which expelled a stone projectile. ›e ‡rst use of the material in mining took place in Hungary in the early seventeenth century. Its use accelerated with the discovery of vast deposits of sodium nitrate in Chile in 1840.
