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
One interesting point is the method of communicating fire from one case
to the next; quickmatch, as used to-day, had not then been invented.
His method was to fasten the cases head to tail a short distance apart
by wrapping and tying paper round in the form of a tube, the space so
formed containing some mealed powder.
He also describes what he calls fixed wheels, which are in effect the
fixed sun of to-day; that is, a framework with cases arranged radially
so that the fire is thrown out from the centre.
As variations of the above, he suggests various effects such as “a
fixed wheel which shall give divers reports,” “which shall cast forth
divers fisgigs, and likewise as many reports or breakers,” “which shall
cast forth many rockets into the ayre.” The latter is evidently the
prototype of a piece known later as the rocket wheel, popular for some
time, but little used at the present, the objection to it being that
there is no control over the direction in which the rockets fly from
it. The wheel revolves horizontally, and projects a series of rockets
into the air as it revolves.
During the following century, as compound fireworks developed in this
country, the Italian and French nomenclature was introduced, many of
which survive at the present time.
The pyrotechnists of the eighteenth century seem to have delighted in
inventing new terms, possibly with the idea of impressing the layman.
Frézier, writing over a hundred years later than Babington, records
very little advance in revolving fireworks, except in the matter of
names. He classifies all revolving pieces as girandoles. This word
appears in pyrotechny very frequently; curiously enough, nearly every
writer has attached a different meaning to it. Frézier explains that
the word is derived from girare—to revolve or gyrate, from the Greek.
Bate applied this meaning to it. He says, “How to make gironels or fire
wheeles.” He is, however, the only English writer to do so; others use
it to mean a flight of rockets, and occasionally for an elaborate fixed
piece of the fountain type.
Ruggieri and Sarti, both Italians, used it in the sense of a “flight”
of rockets in the programme of their Green Park display in 1749.
Ruggieri the younger, however, applies it to a specific kind of
revolving firework in his book, and introduces a new word—girande—to
which he applies the same meaning as the one generally accepted in this
country for girandole. The confusion of these two words, which have the
same derivation, may be the explanation of the duplication of meaning,
or it may lie in the fact that the name was also applied to the rocket
wheel previously mentioned, which both revolves and throws up rockets.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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