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
Bate extends this list considerably by the ingredients of a series of
compositions which he has evidently taken from some alchemistic work.
These compositions are all either designed to burn under water or to
ignite spontaneously in water, and fall somewhat outside the bounds
of our subject. Frézier also includes these, evidently from the same
source.
Bate also refers to a liquid, the recipe for which was probably taken
from the same work.
“Aqua ardens.” The following are his directions for preparing it:
“Take old red wine, put it into a glassed vessell, and put into it of
orpiment one pound, quicke sulphur halfe a pound, quicke lime a quarter
of a pound; mingle them very well, and afterwards distill them in a
rosewater still; a cloth being wet in this water will burne like a
candle and will not be quenched with water.”
It is difficult to see what he obtained by this process differing from
spirits of wine. The quicklime would serve to dehydrate the wine, and
probably no part of the orpiment or sulphur would be taken over in the
distillation.
Rather over a century later we find Frézier and Jones have made
some additions to the ingredients of pyrotechny, the most notable
innovations being the use of iron filings (not to be confused with
the iron scales of Bate, which were probably hammerslag, the magnetic
oxide of iron), steel filings and pulverised cast-iron. Beyond these,
and the spark-producing agent already mentioned, the other additions
are of small importance, the most notable being lapis caliminaris, or
the mineral carbonate of zinc, which however was not used as are metal
salts to-day, that is, for the production of colour.
Jones’s book, written some years after that of Frézier, shows little
advance from the latter as far as pyrotechnic results are concerned.
What he has done, however, is to eliminate what might be called the
alchemistic, or one might almost say magic element with which it is
pervaded.
In attempting to classify the compositions in Frézier’s book one
is staggered by the grotesque character of many of them and by the
extraordinary variations in the proportion of their ingredients, even
amongst compositions designed for a similar effect.
Presumably with the intention of impressing his readers with the
wonders of the science, he added ingredient after ingredient, which, if
they did actually no harm to the composition, certainly in no degree
assisted its functioning.
In what he calls a simple star there are eleven ingredients, of which,
in fact, four only are essential.
Further, beyond the multiplication of unnecessary ingredients in
individual compositions, there is often their incompatibility and
innate unsuitability for the purpose. Such components as ink, onion
juice, and the drainings of a dung-heap suggest so strangely the
formulæ of the alchemists that one almost expects to come across “the
hair of a Barbary ape,” or similar absurdity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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