Pyrotechnics: The History and Art of Firework MakingBrock, Alan St. H. (Alan St. Hill)
History
Pyrotechnics: The History and Art of Firework Making
Brock, Alan St. H. (Alan St. Hill)
Fireworks
It is characteristic of Mr. C. T. Brock that he who originated the idea
was the first to try the descent. The weight of the cable was very
considerable and the strain very heavy in order to keep it sufficiently
taut, and doubts were expressed as to the advisability of putting
such a stress on the structure, which led to the abandonment of the
performance.
It would be tedious to attempt to give anything like a description of
the many and varied moving and stationary devices used in the Crystal
Palace displays. The descriptions in the traditional somewhat flowery
language of the firework programmes would convey little without
illustration. One feature generally to be found in the programme is
that of the wheels. These are generally fired in a group of three in
the centre of the Terrace, the designs varying in form, movement and
colour from time to time, the fire of the centre or largest wheel
forming a circle one hundred feet in diameter.
The historical displays during this period include the displays given
in India in 1875–6, during the tour of King Edward, then Prince of
Wales, at Bombay, Madura, Colombo, Madras, and Jaipur, and a series of
enormous displays carried out at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition
in 1876, at one of which 250,000 people paid half-a-dollar admission,
and in 1877, the displays given at Calcutta and Delhi on the occasion
of the assumption by Queen Victoria of the title Empress of India.
The Jubilee and Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria produced enormous
activity in the manufacture of fireworks. Displays great and small took
place all over the United Kingdom, or rather, the Empire.
Among the displays fired on the occasion of the Diamond Jubilee,
certainly not the least interesting, although comparatively small
in extent, was that given at Blantyre in the heart of the African
continent. This display, which included a portrait of Her late Majesty,
was carried up three hundred and sixty miles of the Zambesi, thence by
canoe over eighty miles of sandbanks and mud, and finally thirty miles
overland with a rise of 3,500 feet.
Other displays were the display on the Tagus in 1886 on the occasion
of the marriage of the late King of Portugal; the display fired from
Brooklyn Bridge for the Columbus Tercentenary in 1892; the Imperial
Fete on the Danube in 1903; the display fired from thirteen battleships
moored at a distance of a quarter of a mile from each other on the
occasion of the “Entente Cordiale” visit of the French Fleet in 1905;
the display celebrating the Tercentenary of the founding of Quebec in
1908; and the greatest display of fireworks ever fired—the official
Peace display in Hyde Park in 1919, in which some of the ground works
suffered from the rain which, unfortunately, started about five
o’clock, but the aerial work was on an unprecedented scale, shells
varying from sixteen inches down to 5½ inches in diameter being fired
in salvoes of twenty-five to one hundred.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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