The first gunpowder was probably an accident. Alchemists in ancient China were hunting for an elixir of immortality when they mixed some powders and something went very wrong. A text from around the 800s warns that people who tried it scorched their hands and faces, and some burned down the whole house.

So how did a failed immortality project turn into the gun? This video follows the steps: festival fireworks, the fire lance, the bronze tube, the oldest gun we still have, and the slow fixes that made it usable. And why it eventually let an ordinary person with a few weeks of training challenge a knight.

Sources and notes:

History of the firearm and hand cannon overviews (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_firearm).
The Heilongjiang hand cannon, found 1970, dated by context to about 1288. It is the oldest surviving gun, not the oldest dated one (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heilongjiang_hand_cannon).
Fire lance on the Dunhuang silk banner, about 950, and the 1132 De’an siege record.
Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 5.
The opening scene is a dramatized version of the warning text, not a recorded event. The shift from fire lance to true gun was gradual, and scholars still debate the timing.

#History #Gunpowder #AncientChina