Everyone knows them, fireworks. You’ve seen them in photos, in a movie or maybe in real life. The beautiful coloured glitters in the dark sky, which you can admire on an evening with friends and family. Besides, everyone knows the song from Katy Perry with the lyrics “You just gotta ignite the light, and let it shine […] As you shoot across the sky. Baby, you’re a firework.” Everyone has some great memories with fireworks, but what do we actually know about the history of these magical, dazzling lights in the sky.
It is believed that the first developments of fireworks took place in the second century B.C. in ancient Liuyang, China. The first natural “firecrackers” were made out of bamboo stalks. The bamboo stalks were thrown into a fire, which caused the hollow air pockets in the bamboo to overheat and eventually explode. The result of those explosions were loud bangs, which were thought to ward of evil spirits.
In the period between 600-900 A.D., a Chinese chemist invented the first man-made gunpowder, by mixing saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal. It is unknown if that invention was discovered in the Middle East or India. After putting the new gunpowder in bamboo stalks, the first official firework was created. In the future, people would use plastic tubes as a replacement for bamboo stalks and instead of throwing the stalks into fire they would use fuses, made out of tissue paper. By the 10th century, the Chinese had devised a way to employ firecrackers as weapons by attaching them to arrows that they would use to attack their enemies. Those firecracker-weapons were refined over the course of the next 200 years into rockets that could be fired at enemies without the help of an arrow.
In 1295, Marco Polo introduced fireworks to Europe from Asia. The Europeans were nevertheless already introduced to gunpowder weaponry a few years earlier. Even though, the West developed more advanced technologies for those weapons, they also kept using fireworks as their original purpose during celebrations. In the centuries that followed, many wealthy and powerful people used the new technology of fireworks. For example, during the wedding of Henry VII in 1486 and the five-hour fireworks show from Tsar Peter the Great, to mark the birth of his son.
More and more pyrotechnic schools emerged in Europe during the Renaissance (14th until 17th century). Those schools taught students how to develop more complicated explosions. Especially in Italy, advanced developments in fireworks were really popular. Chemists managed to increase brightness and make more creative shapes by mixing trace amounts of metals and other ingredients. Instead of only having the colour orange at their disposal, they later succeeded in creating more colours for fireworks.
Logically, fireworks travelled to the New World when the Europeans did. ‘New World’ is a collective term for North America, South America and the Caribbean. This causes the fireworks to be part of the first American Independence Day on the Fourth of July in 1777. From then on, fireworks became a Fourth of July tradition.
“…. Like the Fourth of July. ‘Cause baby, you’re a firework” to come full circle. The bamboo firecrackers have gone through a long evolution to become those magical, dazzling lights in the sky. From bamboo wood in China, to travelling with Marco Polo and celebrating the Fourth of July in the New World. A long history, but it makes the coloured glitters in the dark sky even more beautiful.
01-12-2022
Sources:
- https://www.americanpyro.com/history-of-fireworks, Americanpyro, 01-12-022
- https://www.livescience.com/63468-fireworks-history.html, Alina Bradford, 01-12-2022
Source of picture:
https://pixabay.com/photos/fireworks-new-year-s-eve-city-sky-1953253/, Nck_gsl 01-12-2022