 everyone, good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, wonderful resource there are a lot of people here just to inschau, the volume of the sound is huge I can hear it all! I am very guilty of putting slides in and trying to get too much in, but I want to speak very quickly It is a very light ok thing and I want to slide over what it is about today. ac gallwn ffordd mai'r penderfyniad. DCM erioeddu yn ystafell, i ffwrdd o bwrdd o'r ffordd, mae'r ffwrdd i datganol o rhan o ffordd. Rydyn ni i'n cwrddwch i siaradigaeth, dim ond rhaid o gweithio ddechrau. Marw dechrau'n ei ffordd. Oedden nhw mae'r penderfyniad, ac nid i ystafell i'r rai oedd bynnag, y penderfyniad o ffordd y trafn. Mae'r penderfyniad yn gwir oeddon, gyntaf cyn oedd y gallwn. Rydw i'n cael eu cyflusio sy'n gallu cael rhoi crm-chynlluniaeth ymlaen, felly hyn yn mynd i beth. Rwy'n ffordd, mae'n ffordd, bob unrhyw o'r mewn mwy llyfr. Yn mynd i'w mynd i ymwysgwch, mae'r ffordd boed yn unrhyw, mae'n pwn ddiwedd yn hyn. Rwy'n cael ychwanneud. Chocol yn rwyll. Mae'n ymwysgol. Mae'n ymwysgol. Ac yna'u rwy'n ein hyffordd peirorth is actually in one respect incredibly simple mixture of those you just mix them together dry at the work but actually what it does how it behaves in its property is very very far from simple and that's one of the things that work has brought out. Just I want to spend a few minutes just telling you. Earlier But it is a salt peach, that is the crucial thing It seems to have been discovered in China The story always goes that the Emperor was paying people to alchemist to find the alixier of life And people were trying tornadoe or sauce of compounds One of them was a white crystal mice And which they found preserved meat Salt peach was used extensively it used sausages and preserving meat Llywodraeth yw'r idea yw yw'r mhwysgwch i fynd i'w yw'r mhwysgwch i'w ffyrdd yma yw'r mhwysgwch ac yn ystod y Rhonig o fe yw'r ddechrau yng nghyd yn rhan i'r prif, rydw i'r ffordd. Rwy'n dechrau, arno 6-7 oes ymyddog, yw yw'r ffordd. I ddwy i'n neud i'r cyffredinol, ac rydyn ni'n ffordd o'r 2-3 oes ymyddog yn gwneud unrhyw ddechrau ddyliau. This wonderful, wonderful banner, it's from Dunang in China, is now in Paris, is dated around 100 and it's showing two devils, they're obviously some sorts of gunpowder devices, whether they're guns or not, but some sort of incendery gunpowder devices. And that's one of the earliest representation really, so around 100, well before, hastings. And for the next two or three centuries, Felly soldiers were definitely using gum powder mixtures in�� centraries and the famous and very magisterial works by Joseph Needham, on the history technology in China. Published for ever and ever through the twenty ninth century. Andrew wrote one cooked and the epic of gum powder and he goes through the development of this includes a lot and he laid the foundations O fod yw'r ffordd o'n ei wneud oedd eich bod yn eich bod yn ddod y gwybod yn y ffordd o'r bwysig, ond amddwn ni'n gweithio'n ei rwynt nhw'n ffordd o'r llwyddiad, fel chi'n fwy o'r c edition ar gyfer y gwirionedd yma. Mae'n pwysig i'r geisio'r llwyddiad, ond mae'n cyflawnio'n amser o'r llwyddiad, ond mae'n gweithio'r llwyddiad o'r llwyddiad, This is the first representation of the Canon of Artillery in Europe. It moves from China to the west, of course probably via the Silk Road, the Silk Routes bringing, I used to think it brought the idea, now I'm more convinced actually, probably it brought the first Salt Peter as well, although that was why. But this is dated 1326. This copy is in Oxford, it's actually a second copy of the same book dated 1326 ac yn y Llyfriddor Bryddoedd. Ond yw'r amgylchedd, ond nid ei fydd yn fyddiw'r maen nhw'n myl mewn o'r newydd o'r maen nhw. Yn gyflawnio'r lleion ffarsiaid bach. Mae'r cymdeithasiaeth yn ymwneud ymlaen nhw'n griffen, mae roedd yn gweithio'n gweithio'n ddweud. Ond mae mae'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio, You shot bows and arrows, you shot crossbows. Arrow were the thing, a projectile. So, actually it's quite an obvious thing. And of course, the arrow extends back beyond the fletching, beyond the flight into the barrel itself down to the bottom. So, it's not as if it's just perched in the end, and I'll come back for that a little bit later. But strangely, actually, gunpowder weapons through the 14th century, from 1326 to are none. I define anybody to show me one or find one. and knowledge then is very very very limited. So it goes actually into the first half of the 15th century. This is the first gun we actually have a date for. This is 1453. It's not quite true perhaps but I'll skat over ac mae'n gweithio'n meddwl cwylio. Mae gwybodeth yn i'r ystod o'r cyfnod, yw'r gynghwyno'r gynghwyno'r ffordd i'r eu glaw wedi'u ddweud. Mae'n meddwl, mae'n meddwl cwylio'n meddwl o'r gynghwyno'r gynghwyno'r gynghwyno i ddweud o'r effeith. Mae'r ddweud o'r hyffords yn ei wneud o gwybod, ac mae'r gwmpawl yw'r gwmpawl wedi'u cyfnodwch. ac mae'r ffordd, yn y bafiau, yn 1525, bydd eisiau i ddweud o'r bach i gyngorau gwmpau gofyn nhw'n 50. Mae'r ffordd, yn y bach, yn y bach i'r bach i'r cyntaf, yn gwrthod o ddweud o'r bach i'r cyngorau gwmpau gwahanol, ac mae'r ddweud o'r ffordd yn cael ei ddweud o'r cyngorau gwahanol. Yn 1620, y bachai Francis yw'r dweud yw'r ffordd yma'r ei ddweud, ..y prindyn a'r cwmpas oherwydd eich fyfnwys i'r llunio'r cymhwyllt. A wrth gwrs, fel y 17 ynghylch y cwmpadow yn ymgyrch yn ei wneud... ..y'n ymgyrch yn ymgyrch yn y gwybod yr argylch o'i gwasanaethol... ..y wnaeth am ynw i'r llunio'r cymhwyllt. Mae'r cymhwyllt yn ymgyrch ddwylo'r euro Western... ..y'n mynd i'r ymgyrch yn yr oes y cyfnodau... ac i'w gwneud yn ychwanegol, ac mae'n ddweud yn fawr iawn. Rwy'n ymwneud yn dweud i'r ffordr ac mae'n cymdeithasol yn dweud, ac mae'n gweithio'n cymdeithasol yn dweud. Mae'n gwneud yn y ffordr ac mae'n cymdeithasol yn dweud, ac mae'n chyflodd arall o fod yn ychydig fydda'r problemau. o'r cyflei. Mae hyn sy'n gweithio'r ffaith o'r cyflei o'r cyflodau ar gyflodau. Ac ydych chi'n defnyddio'r cyflodau i'r llyfrigiau a'r cyflodau sy'n gweithio, mae'n fwyaf i'w gallu wych. Ond y gweithio'r cyflodau o'r cyflei o'r cyflodau ac o'r cyflodau a'r cyflodau o'r cyflodau mae'r ffaith o'r cyflodau i gweithio'r cyflodau, mae'n gweithio'r cyflodau o'r cyflodau. Felly mae'r gweithio'r cyffredinol yn gennym iawn, mae 75-15-10. A mae 75 saltpeter, 15 jar o rhan o 10 saltpeter. Fe yna'r hunai dechrau dros yma'r hyn. Fe yna'r theori gwaith, y thoriadau o'r newid yn ei wneud yn byw i, ac mae oedd y cyfrif iawn o ddim yn dweud yn gweithio'r gwneud yn dweud yn gweithio'r saltpeter o'r llwyth i ddweud. Mae oedd yn gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio. Ac mae oedd yn gallu bod yn gweithio'r gweithio'r 50% mae'n gallu cyrnau. It doesn't explode, it doesn't burn, doesn't do anything, it's useless. And this is where needom built up a huge idea of how China developed gunpowder, and development, because he didn't think they developed the gun, because they didn't have enough saltpetre. He also thought, I'll come back to it, that they invented rockets first. I'll show you towards the end of the talk. Rockets are rocket science and they ain't simple. dyna ni'n gwneud i gynnyddio cyfnod. Gwyddyn ni'n gwneud y cyfnod cyfnod wedi'i meddwl i'u gyrwch. Ac y dyma'r gwirionedd meddwl i'w cyfnod uchel o'r gwirionedd meddwl i'w cyfnod i'w cwmpaidd sydd y meddwl er mwynodog byddoch. Mae'r ymarfer clwn hynny'n gwirionedd. Mae'n fyddechrau gyffredinol yn eich gw съddol, gyffredinol yn cyfnod i ei'r ffradeg wyddo sy'n meddwl. Mae e'n gwirionedd meddwl i'u cyfnod. Felly, iddynt mae'n d jumping yn hyn o gweld... ...y'n dweud hynny. Rhyw hwn yn iawn o'r cyhoedd, mae hwn yn siwer... ...y'n nhw дdweud yn ei bwysig. Mae'n ddau yn gweithio heb o'r rhaid yn cael ei eistedd i ysgrifenni... ...ifieson i ddatblygu... ...dyna i dweud, a i ddweud o ddych chi'n g dechrau... ...a'n eistedd i ddydwau i'r hun database i ddim yn olygu, a'n roedd dim yn diwrnod. Enw, roedd ddweud yn genbyd amno. Fe ydw i'n rhaid... ond ond sylwyr yn gallu ei dystafell o'i rhywbeth gyda'u oed. Fel hynny gallwn ein bod yn gweld y 19th oes iawn. oedd yn gallu ymryd, os ym w efectifol yn ysgol fすol, ac rydw i fynd o bryd ei fod yn jwgfyrddio cymaint i India, bydd yn gallu iawn y f estaban bod hynbyn pa fyddfyrdol. Dwi'n gynnw'r gynnwys arall. Mae ddim yn gynnwys gyfrannu ar gynnwys ar gynnwys ar gyfer y bwyde, rydw i'n dweud i'r llysgwyr hwnnw, sydd yna'r rydyn ni'n gweithio i'w bwysig am gyffredinol y bwysig yma, yn y 18th ysgol, yn y cyfrifwyr dim yn gweithio'r cyfrifwyr yn y bwysig ar gyfer gweithio gweithio'r llaw a'r gweithio'r cyfrifwyr yn ei gweithio'r cyfrifwyr. Mae y problemau, cyfrifwyr yn ei gweithio'r cyfrifwyr yn ei gweithio'r cyfrifwyr. Wg yw'r cyfrifwyr yma, mae yna unrhyw ar y cyfrifwyr, ac mae'n rhan o glwyddon o'r smwg. Ie dwi'n meddwl i'r llwyddoedd. Mae'r rhaid i'r hwn yn ym 1840, mae'r cyfnod o'r cyfnod, yng Nghymru, yng Nghymru, yng Nghymru, ac mae'n gwybod. Mae'r rhaid i'r hwn i'r hwn. Felly, y cyfnod yn gwybod. Fy oeddaeth o'r hwn yn y ddechrau, mae'n ddweud o'r ddweud o'r cyfnod o'r gwybod yn y cerddol, o'r cyfnod ar gyfer y cyfnod. Yr gweithio'r gwybod, is we don't know anything about the very early types of gunpowder weapons that guns that they were in are like, they don't survive, or rather they probably do survive, we can't date them yet. So this whole work started by a very very fortuitous meeting between myself and a colleague in Denmark, Peter Deming, I will see a picture of later, and we decided we'd work on the effects and experiments on gunpowder. And when we got together we were looking it back and we sort of started not so much working together but other people had started to look at the same problems. And I just showed you a couple of the very early experimental work. This is the gun I showed you earlier, the 1326. Well the Royal Armour is actually able to make a copy, a speculative copy, which we actually did some very simple tests on. Lots of complications due to finances, economics and transport and all sorts of things. We only did some very very very limited tests on. And the amazing thing about this was everybody wanted to stuff it full of gunpowder, which is what we started off. And every time we fired it it just blew the arrow just near the reams. It actually works with a tiny tiny, an ounce or two of powder, just 25g or something. And it was only really late in the day we discovered it worked, but it does work. And you probably can't see it but the arrow is sitting there and the fletching goes on beyond the fletching so it sits right inside the barrel. But the really exciting work started in the early part of this century where the Royal Armour is and the Mary Rose Trust got together and started making replica guns from the Mary Rose, sank in 1545. We were able to make these guns and test them. This is one of the wrought iron guns from the main deck of the Mary Rose. So this is a front line gun firing stone shot. This is a full size replica shot at a small range and you can see the amount of smoke it makes. And we set up a rudimentary ship side to fire at because actually it was with the Mary Rose. We were very interested in the defeat of ships and what was going on. So we were finding this was planking, not really quite as thick as the Mary Rose would have been, but again it was starting to give us some ideas. And what's interesting is this was a stone ball where it goes in. It's actually quite a small hole. It's that little punch that will hold through it or whatever, but stunningly at the back, look what happens. The wood just goes shatters and sends a shower of splinters and stuff behind it. So if you're standing there, the crew, everybody, you're either injured, put out of action or actually if you're standing right behind it, that would have killed you. The ball probably didn't do anything to you. And this is actually informed other work. There's been some very, very recent work with the Varsal in Stockholm and they learned from this early work and they did a lot of work on now looking at the splintering effects. We were also able to go on to make a full size bronze cast replica from the Mary Rose. This is one of that. This is the full thing. Firing cast iron shot now. Huge range down in Essex and Schubert in S, which I think is closed now, but we can see the smoke. It had a range of over a kilometre. Ranges are a very difficult subject. It worked extremely well. But the real problem with all this work, it looks fabulous. It gives you some data. It's all done using modern gun powder. So you buy it from ICI or whoever and you put it in your gun. You don't know how much to make, how much to put in because you can't put the same amount in your gun powder. So actually, although the experiments are very informative, they don't give you anything. And I forgot to say, this is one of the high speed photographs that you can see. I don't think you can see the cannon on the right. A wonderful spall of flame and smoke. If you catch it, you can just see the ball to the left hand side there. There's the barrel here. A rather fantastic high speed shot. But all done using modern gun powder. When Peter came along, he's the director of a medieval reconstructed town in Denmark and their remit is to investigate medieval technology. And he gave us the ability to go there each summer for a week or two, put together some experiments. We had a licensed firework maker, the man who made the fireworks for Tivoli Gardens, who used to, he's now retired, they use Chinese fireworks now. So he was legally allowed to do it and he would supervise us and in fact do a lot of the work. But we were able to use this centre in Denmark to do some work. And our initial experiments were quite simple. We wanted to just get some, we wanted to make and test gun powder using as far as possible medieval methods. What that meant was, what we were interested in specifically in the very early time is, what was the effect of the composition, going back to those that I showed you earlier, and what was the effect of corning. I'll come on to corning, I'll tell you what corning is a bit later. It's making the gun powder into little pellets and it's always said that corning gun powder made it much, much more powerful. We'll come back to that. So, we went out to collect our components. So we needed a sulphur. Well, there's two places in Europe where a sulphur came into Europe in the medieval period, Sicily, the volcanic areas of Mount Etna where actually the sulphur is mined underground, and Iceland, where the sulphur is everywhere. It just covers the centre part of the island. And we know from records that the sulphur came into Northern Europe because it was in Denmark, they had close links to the Iceland, which made a nice synergy. So, we went to Iceland. Of course, we were a medieval centre. We did a lot of work. We collected sulphur in medieval clothing, medieval dress, brought it back, whatever. And then we had to refine it. We've found a new way to do this now, but at the time, the early period, what we decided to do is the simplest, easiest way possible. And what we did is we just heated up that material we collected in Iceland in an oil bath. Sulfur melts, I'll forget exactly, it's 120 degrees centigrade, I think. So it melts quite readily and then we poured it through a piece of cloth into capetins, perhaps that sulphur, just a nice easy way of doing it. So, it's pretty medieval, if you ask me. I mean, chuckle. We all know what chuckle is. We had a ready supply of alder. There's a lot of work about which was the best wood. We, at this time, we just wanted to get some chuckle. It mattered to us that it was the best wood. We also made our own clamp. And this is Peter Venning here on the right. It's very rare to get a picture of Peter. He's always on the other side of the camera and insists on not being photographed. I mean, very few, but he's the guy that's really been the driving force a lot behind this. So, I must admit, I had a lot to owe to Peter for doing all this work. But out of that, we got chuckle. Okay, there were the simple bits. Sult Peter. As I said before, it's potassium nitrate. Now, the problem with this is, it has this stuff in it, nitrogen. Now, I don't know how much you know about nitrogen, but nitrogen is 80% of the air we breathe, and it makes N2, two atoms of nitrogen come together. And when they come together, they form an incredibly stable bond that's very, very, very hard to break. It's a very inert substance. What it means is, you can't find potassium nitrate in a mine, in a pile, in a heap. You can't go and mine it, you can't go and collect it. You have to make it. And like almost everything I've said today, there is one exception to that. Proves the rule always. But you have to make this stuff. But there is, funnily enough, a very easy and relatively easy supply of it. And that comes from all of us and the whole animal kingdom. When you eat food, your body takes the food, turns it into energy and all that. But a waste product is always urea. Now, urea is poisonous, and that's what your kidneys do. They extract it from your blood, get rid of it in urine. So, actually, the urine of animals is full of nitrogen compounds. And to make potassium nitrate, this is where you need the dung heap. And a dung heap consists of urine, dung and soil. And we've done a lot of wondering why all those things are needed. And it turns out, you'll see it, you do need all three. Funnily enough, all the old recipes talk about adding straw, and we always thought straw doesn't really matter. Actually, we think it does matter. It helps aerate the pile. But anyway, these are the things you really need. And what happens very briefly is bacteria in the heap, the urea bacteria, turn the urea into ammonia. Further bacteria turn the ammonia, nitrosomonas, into nitrite. That's got two, you see two oxygens. And then you need a third bacteria, nitrobacter, and you've got nitrate. So if you make up a pile of dung, urine, soil and dung and whatever, it'll ferment very much like your compost teeth at home. And those bacteria will act on all of that and produce nitrate. And this is a 16th century picture. That's what they're doing here. This is the extraction plant to get the nitrate out. But here's all the piles. And of course it's fantastic fertilizer, so of course it grows plants all over it. And this needs a year or two to work to get in there. I also put this in very briefly. This came up very briefly because actually there's very, very little evidence for saltpeter works in this country. This was found in the record office in Ipswich a few years ago now. It wasn't to do with the saltpeter, it was to do with a land grant or something. But actually this is the saltpeter works. Absolutely enormous saltpeter works here. And here's where the pile of dung heaps are underneath these pentus roots. That was quite exciting. It's dated 1590. I'll forget the exact date, but it's in the 1590s. So we had to make our own dung heap. So here's poor roof. There's a scale just to show us making our dung heap. And we put a small pentus roof over it and we filled it through for three or four tonnes of dung of soil. And we added urine, which came in old milk churns, as you can see. And we put this together. The other thing, we had a failed attempt at this earlier. This is another attempt. You do need piles, you need air, you need to oxygenate it. You need, actually, if you can, to keep aerating it, which is where I think the straw came in. It also raises the temperature much like your compost heap at home. And we were just checking this here to see that actually it does. It was warmer than the air. You can't probably see it just as that. But actually there was a yellow, sorry, a white film for me on the soil. So whereas it should have been very dark brown. So we got very excited, I can tell you, are we forming saltpeter? But how do you get it out? And fortuitously, of course, nitrate is very soluble. So you can get it out with water. And the way you do it, this is a 16th century treatise by a man called Urca. You put it into buckets. You fill it full of the saltpeter soil. You pour water onto it. And they always have a little piece of wicker to stop the water penetrating. So it doesn't splash on the surface. It's quite interesting. And you let it stand. And after a day or two, you let it run out into here. And then you take that and you put it into a boiler. You boil it down, evaporate it, and the saltpeter crystallise out. That's the simple way. We'd need another hour lecture for me really to explain all the ins and outs of that. But that's the simple way. So what did we do? We got together our team in Denmark. Dressed in our Master Gunners uniform. What we call our churls, our labourers. Filled our buckets with saltpeter earth. Filled them with water. Drained them off into further buckets. Put them into a boiler. This is Yent, a wonderful colleague in Denmark. Boiled it down. We got very excited because all the accounts talk about the scum for me on top. Very heavy thick scum. Paul Rudd spent days scumming this off. It was really, really fantastic. And in the end, we got saltpeter. What's really, really characteristic of it is these long needle-like crystals. And in fact, we were talking about it some years ago. And in the 17th century, they talked about icicles of saltpeter. How are we going? What are the icicles? And then a colleague came along and said, Of course, it's obvious, it's icicles. And that's what you do with it for me, you'll see a bit later. They form these long thin crystals just like icicles form. But, it's always a but. The sources told us that we'd expect 3-5%. So we processed a metric ton. So we should have got 30 kilos, 50 kilos. We got 150 grams. So we're doing it right. We're getting it. And we still, I said to someone earlier, this is still what we've got going. We know the process, we can do the process. Now we've got to find out what we're doing wrong. And why aren't we getting the yield we should? I'll just stay on this one for a moment. So we're getting a saltpeter. Now, that left us in a bit of a quandary because we then wanted to make gum powder. We've got a sulfur and we've got a charcoal. We've got a saltpeter from. I told you earlier you couldn't go and dig it up. Well, you can in one place on earth. It's in Chile. And there's a very strange phenomenon on the west coast of Chile where the environment, the winds, the rain, the sea and everything have formed deposits, huge deposits of sodium nitrate. And that's been imported into Europe for about 100 years long. And that's used as fertilizer. And there's a couple of companies, especially one in Spain, that converts the sodium nitrate into potassium nitrate. So it's as near as we could get. So I'm afraid we have to cheat. So we've used what we call chili saltpeter in our work. And the work on getting saltpeter itself, ourselves, what goes on. So now we need to make a gum powder. This is the way it's done in a 15th century firework book owned by the Royal Armouries in Leeds. Wonderful pestles and mortars, must be mechanised, a rather nice one. I'm always fascinated by the fact that it has this hourglass. We're actually doing it for a time. So it's actually quite a standard process. I also wonder why the man on the left is showing his bottom. But ideas for you. But this is us. Because we were then doing something dangerous, we decided we wouldn't do it in the open with our costume on. So you could just see Lars, he's a firework maker here. He's directing work. And we're using wooden mortars and pestles to do all the work, because of course you don't want anything. What we did, we simply mixed up charcoal, saltpeter, just ground them up, mixed them up in proportions and ground them together. Didn't actually do it for very long. Five, ten minutes. Now I told you, I said something about corning earlier. What corning is, is making it into pellets. Make it up first through your proportions. You wet it with alcohol. This is cherry or apple brandy we used here. And then you push it through a sieve. And it comes out as pellets the size of the sieve. It's a rubbish photograph. Black powder is almost impossible to take a photograph of because it's just black. But you get little pellets. We wanted to make some corn powder to try it again. So we've got a gun powder, we've made some simple gun powder and there's near a way to gun powder in many of the ways. What do we fire it from? How do we test it? Sorry, I forgot to say. What we were interested in there are quite a few recipes in 15th century sources and we extracted these at good range and they're just given these from the titles of the manuscripts we got from. You see they range from 50% saltpeter to the 75% which is thought to be the best. What we decided, we wanted to fire it and the way we would do it is fire it from a gun and then measure the velocity of the ball it sent out and that would give us a measure of the power of the gun powder. This is a famous gun found in Stockholm in the 19th century it's called the Loschalt or Loschalt gun and it's always said, it's not dated but it's always said to be an early piece because of its similarity to the Milamit and Milamit piece of the Bosphor photograph. We were able to acquire a modern replica of this which we could actually put gun powder in and fire. So that's what we did. Sorry, it's a rubbish photograph but there's a little gun in there. It's a little tiny thing, it's only about 30cm long just a bit of a foot. It's in a wooden bed. This is the device that measures the velocity and we managed at this time to hook up with the Danish army. They brought along their wonderful radar and some ranges and this was the little setup. It's on the beach in Jutland in Denmark which is the official Danish army testing ground where we were completely and about 200 yards to one side they're sunbathing. This is the Danish army for you. So we went to our tests we had measured amounts of gun powder very carefully measured out it was a very strict loading procedure we did it all and whatever and to say that we were thumb struck when we did this test it really was. We expected this one the 50% we were expecting the ball might just have dropped out the end, might have just flown off or something. It's 110m2 it'll kill you okay it's not as good as that 75% but it worked. So where's your theory that low nitrate powders don't explode? What have we done? How do you explain it? Now it's a funny thing about experimental archaeology it's often the failures which tell you more than the successes so we went back and had a look at what we did and this is what we did. The gun had been made with a bore of so many millimetres and then someone else had made the ammunition for it and the ammunition was about a half a millimetre too big. So each time the ball had had to be hammered into the bore the powder was acting it's like a champagne cork What was happening was it was so contained inside the barrel that all the powder was burning even with the low nitrate all the gases and smoke was being formed it got to a certain pressure and went pop. So actually you can make a gun with low nitrate powder and then you think well did they do that? So then you find a wonderful tapestry which is now in Genoa and look at the guy here See his hammer? See the tompion at the end here? That's what he's doing he's actually forcing the gun powder in. Now let me just summarise the results of this because we did quite a lot of testing and I want to go on some other things but the results of this first initial one and we've done this several times now is yeah it works, it works quite well it's not up to modern standards of course but it works. We tried corning there's a lot of factors to do with explosions and gunpowder and things and for our experiments it made no difference at all now actually I think there may be a reason for that which is again a bit complicated but funnily enough it doesn't always make a difference What it did do though is when we used corned powder we had absolutely no misfires whereas with the powdered gunpowder it occasionally just fizzled and wouldn't explode quite interesting where you don't get any misfires What it seemed to say is the composition is not as important as has been thought and this is the real crunchy the really important part it's not the composition which is crucial it's what I call degree of compaction I haven't got a term for it it's quite interesting I could take 60-40-10 nitrate powder make that up put it on the table here and set light to it and it wouldn't explode take exactly the same powder put it in a gun barrel artillery or handgun put a ball in front of it like a shoot any of you third thing, exactly the same gun powder not low nitrate powder I can turn the same powder into a rocket which will the gunpowder burn for 4, 5, 6 seconds so you can see composition may be important but the way the gunpowder or the state is utterly crucial and what I want to go on is show you some of the work now that we've sort of done around this and why that's important and what's happening and what we've been doing I just went on to say of course I've just said that this is a picture this is, Needham was saying that the Chinese didn't get a gun because they could make rockets very early what I'll show you is rockets are not easy to make and I think, unlike Needham that this is a gun whereas he thought it was some sort of eruptor and here's another picture and actually the Chinese probably invented guns in the 12th or 13th century now I want to go on now it's a bit boring talking about some nice pictures now we got very very very interested because although gunpowder weapons, the guns and artillery and small arms were being used in the medieval period incendiaries were incredibly part of warfare and they're not really regarded most people don't see them they've disappeared, they've been blown up destroyed they're not mentioned very much in sources but actually there's a huge number of incendiaries in the medieval and early modern world and the first one, the fire lance which is sometimes called a tronk different names in different languages is a device often fixed to the front of a lance and it's spewed forth fire out the front and it was fantastic to frighten horses and to use against men in narrow places and whatever and there are early 16th century recipes for how you make them up so again another picture made of a tube filled with gunpowder mixtures of various types so why don't we try it and here's Lars making up our tronk quite complex mixture of powders that burn at different rates some of which are compressed and some of which are not so some burn quick which is quite interesting here we are, we just lashed it to the front of a lance piece of dowl and my gosh that it worked brilliantly burned for about 10 to 12 seconds spewing forth flames and smokes a fantastic weapon to use against enemy coming towards you wonderful trebuchets in the distance of what are actually the medieval centre the trebuchet on the right is fired every day in the summer it is the most amazing sight you ever can go and see that being fired at night when they fire a flaming ball is something else now interesting another thing that's sort of a lot in the literature a lot around it what we call very simply fire pots ceramic pots filled with some sort of incendiary mixture and the recipes are there covered up a fuse and then you throw them by hand actually it was much more common in the medieval period than we all think slings were used extensively right through into the 15th and I think even into the 16th century but you can see it putting into a sling to be thrown well we had the recipes oh sorry I forgot to say these do survive there is a fantastic collection of fire work weapons in southern Germany at Koburg castle here's the pots they're empty of course completely empty and again this is explained in the sources this is rope you make up a very concentrated solution of saltpeter you put the rope in it you leave it to it soaks in you take it out and dry it and when you light the rope it stays burning it's how they keep cigarette papers or they used to keep cigarette papers alight so they don't go out you just burn all the time you buy a cigarette and you light one and it burns the whole way down it's because something in the paper is making it burn you see you can light the ends of these it's quite safe get it in your sling or a hand throw it and the idea is when it hits it should go off it sounded very improbable to us because the actual mixtures that go in it are made up principally of gunpowder and animal fat and that's what this is this gloopy mess inside here we used lard or the butcher's lard mixed up the gunpowder to the recipe given to us looked totally silly we just thought this isn't going to work and we made up we had to do it safely of course so this is how we rigged it up so we could drop it from a height so it would smash and we had a trigger mechanism and hopefully this will work so there's the fuse being lit so it's safe the end is just taking it up I think this is one that we did about half a dozen I think tests in the end I think this is one of the very first ones because they don't give you enough to raise you that pie and we've just on the ground we've just put some wooden boards and a few stones just to make sure it has hit something so it wouldn't shatter on the grass come on oh it's not working so it's going slush sorry the video is jumping it worked brilliantly we just could not believe just this mixture and just these tiny bits of fuse setting it off fantastic device and interestingly there was a small piece of film on YouTube about this and archaeologists working at Corff Castle down in Dorset discovered this and they were a bit perplex because it has three handles it's a firepot so they were able to tell them actually they found it now we were always wanting to experiment with arrows because you've all seen the Hollywood films the arrow is the flaming cloth you dip it into petrol or whatever set light to it and fire it when you read the sources that is not how it works fire arrows are much much more complex than that and here again the firework book is the making fire arrows the arrow has a small fabric bag attached to the front it's full of a gunpowder mixture and that's how they and I just want to point out actually just to look at the bottom here I'm going to see these two guys dipping things in here because this puzzled us for a bit and I'll come back and see something about that and they were quite extensively used often from crossbows but also from bows and they were fantastically sticky in thatch and buildings don't forget in a pre modern age everything's made of wood everything's thatch straw it's all flammable so you're firing these if you can also see you can see that this is something else we found they actually have to have a tiny fuse on them I'll come back to that and you'll see because again I'm summarising a sort of several days work here we started off without a fuse and realised it didn't work and then we went back to this saw the fuse thought tried it ah that's how it works so this was a fire arrow from another 15th century firework book one in Copenhagen and that's our replica of it a bag of incendiary mixed and then the source tells you it's not a picture of it but the source then tells you you dip it or you coat it in pitch you heat the pitch up and you coat so you make a hard coating and I think that's what those guys were doing in the first picture they were giving that you've now got this wonderful incendiary packet we managed to be Peter had an old crossbow a modern crossbow made up who he is so we discovered you had to cut the little bag at the front insert a little bit of quick match in light the quick match and this is a result quite a lot of test fires you then had to wait a bit because we often put quite a bit of match on it just to be safe but we wanted it to burn down before we fired all the films aren't going as well as expected they're a bit jerky unfortunately but it sticks in as you can see the view is burns down so you're not interested in it burning all the way because actually if you do sorry basically it goes and the little packet the little pitch packet because it opens at the front it shoots flame forward at your target so it's a fantastic way of setting light to stuff and what we discovered if you do light an arrow and did it in any way by the time it gets to where it's going it's gone out so this was a much better way of doing it my time was a speed up now I want to very very very much to tell me about rockets because rockets are rocket science and they do are quite complex devices what you need to make a rocket you need a thick rigid outer tube you need very highly compacted powder very highly compacted powder and you need a void at the centre and what happens is when you put the fuse up the centre you set light to it the gunpowder burns from this surface outwards generating huge amounts of smoke and gases which shoot out the back and give you a propulsion and you improve it or by what's called choking the end of your tube squeezing it rocket makers call it choking with a piece of string so you're concentrating it doing it this is the sort of tools and in fact fun enough when you can start going around collections in Europe you see these around this is what you make rockets on that needle that steel that forms the void you then put that over the top you put a wooden cover over the top in which your cylinder your paper cylinder holds your rocket sit so it controls it and then what you do is you put little bits of gunpowder in you put a tamper on over the top and you knock it with a mallet and what's quite interesting is that the tampers all have holes at the centre of course because they have to fit over the needle and what you do is you put in a couple of spoonfuls of powder put a tamper in hard so you make a solid very hard gunpowder and that will burn sorry that's a 17th century picture you see that's what you've got you've got the void at the centre you've got it going you put a stick on it you light it and that's why I call it from the dung hill to the stars but the point I wanted to make very strongly is rockets are not simple you can't just take a bit of rocket a bit of gunpowder, light it and expect it to go off like that it's actually quite difficult to make now I wanted to just end a five minutes of the sort of very latest newest work we've done because we were interested in this idea everyone talked about how the race dominated the world and I want to put forward an idea that basically one of the reasons why Europe was able to dominate the world for such a long time is because saltpeter from India if you go back from sources and look at it, certainly from the early 16th sorry from the early 17th and from the 1650s especially saltpeter was being imported into this country from India in increasing increasing increasing amounts so this is right through the 18th century and if you chart this student of the 19th century by 1850 it's, I forget the figure but it's something like 25,000 tonnes so you're really forgetting it but where was it coming from we had two very enigmatic pictures from the back of Joseph Newdham's book this we think is the equivalent of the barrel extracting the nitrate that's the barrel, goes through the bottom and it's collected there and this is the boiling pit you're boiling it down so we raised some money and very very speculative, we went to India and through a friend of a friend who knew someone who knew someone else who would then introduce us to someone we ended up in a tiny place called Jay Laser this is Agra we're the Taj Mahal and this is Jay Laser and what we found was a whole saltpeter making factory here is the extraction this is a square one and we got them to get excavated for us and look at it here's how you extract your nitrate they used a piece of jute sacking we just asked them to do it exactly as they would do it on top they then put their saltpeter earth on top put water over it and you can see he's breaking the fall of the water with the sacking collecting the water here's the picture this is what we found there is that there's the boiler there and there it's there in there you can see it, it's very very hard to photograph and the fire is put underneath and we were speculating, we were wondering how earth, if you make this you need enormous amounts of energy where's all the wood, the material coming from so you turn up in India and you're driving across the country and the answer is, it's plain as the nose on the India face they collect cow dung as fuel by the hundreds of thousands of tonnes and that's what they use, it's fantastic it does much you like now this was utterly fascinating and it turned around we thought this was them taking the saltpeter out of solution and dumping it here and it's not this is the impurities what you do is you can slowly increase the concentration of nitrate here and as you do that the impurities fall to the bottom and are scooped out and what you then do, when it comes to a certain point is you take out the liquid and they scoop it out into a settling tank you let it settle and you get saltpeter and they will make saltpeter enormous amounts of it and this is the saltpeter just ground up for drying but that's actually saltpeter icicles as they come out of the sedimentation tanks first so there were our icicles and of course all this work needs a huge number of people of people to help us do it primarily Peter the Danish middle-aged the Loud Centre of course but lots and lots of people of too numerous dimensions have helped to produce the videos and the work of that and I hope that's just given you a small taste of something which looks simple just a mixture of three simple ingredients can be actually incredibly complex thank you very much