EXPLOSIVE IDEA

As no one can predict who will make an invention or how it will be used, we should not be surprised when we learn that 780 years ago an English monk carefully wrote this down, “I have produced an explosion that out-roared thunder and with a flash that exceeded the brilliance of lightning”. Roger Bacon hid this formula in a Latin cryptogram which said, “Take seven parts of saltpeter, five of charcoal and five of sulphur”. When he wrote down these dozen words, Bacon probably had no idea that they might later influence the whole of civilization because, as you know, he was describing gunpowder, the first of the great family of explosives. 

He may have had some conception after all of the possibilities of the mixture because he was a remarkable, farseeing man who not only experimented with chemical combinations but also predicted the use of the steamship, the automobile and the airplane, and described in detail the magnifying or reading glass. 

Roger Bacon lived near the end of the dark ages – the days of the alchemists and the Black Arts. But even in those days of superstition, he was a strong advocate of the fundamentals of modern research. He stated it this way, “Take nothing for granted – use your own eyes and test all new theories with your own hands”. Roger bacon by his work in philosophy laid the foundation for modern scientific research. 

He wrote once that his gunpowder mixture might completely blow up an opposing army or put it to flight by the terror of the explosion; however, he made no mention of using it in firearms. 

It wasn’t until after his death that the cannon was first mentioned. There is an Arabic account of a cannon in 1303 and in Oxford, England, a picture dated 1326 shows what was called a “dart-throwing vase”. Edward  used wooden canon and a weapon consisting of 144 barrels in groups of 12 – an idea not unlike our battery banks of today.       

   

When Mohammed 11 besieged Constantinople in 1453, he had 13 large guns called bombards and 56 small cannon. The bombards were immense – requiring 60 oxen to pull them in place. They threw stones 30 inches in diameter which weighed three quarters of a ton. But since it took 2 hours to load them, they could fire only a few times each day. However, the new weapon was effective and Mohammed’s army battered its way into the city in less than two months and ended the Roman Empire in the East. 

The invention of gunpowder and the subsequent development of the cannon and musket emphasize the importance of Roger Bacon’s work as a bridge between the Dark ages and the beginning of the new scientific era. He knew his methods of careful experimentation were at odds with the superstition and guess-work of his time because he was often thrown into jail. He realised that his theories and experiments belonged more to the future than to his own time. 

Yet it is hardly possible that he could have foreseen the great commercial and industrial applications of his ideas, for just as the steam engine and the internal combustion engine were used first in industry and then became important factors in the conduct of war, so gunpowder, developed and first used in war, made an even greater contribution to industry in such places as mines, quarries, clearing of new lands, digging irrigation ditches and in many other applications. In fact, the development of explosives from the work of Roger Bacon has been taken by some to the beginning of the age of industrial chemistry. 

The peacetime use of explosives has been so great that the production of military needs were met with no unusual difficulty. The millions of shells from thousands of guns and the bombs used by our airplanes on all the battlefronts are the evidences of just a part of what came from the idea born seven centuries ago. No one can sit in judgment of any new born idea and say what its future uses may be.