Suddenly there was an explosion, shattering the chemical apparatus and probably alarming the whole building. “Good gracious!” we can imagine some of the startled brothers saying, “whatever is he up to now! Does he want to kill us all?” That explosion proved the new combination was not fitted for use as a thrown fire; it also showed the existence of terrible forces far beyond the power of all bow-springs, even those made of steel.
Roger Bacon thus discovered what was practically gunpowder, as far back as the thirteenth century, and left writings in which he recorded mixing 11.2 parts of the saltpeter, 29.4 of charcoal, and 29 of sulphur. This was the formula developed as the result of his investigations.
Berthold Schwartz, a monk of Freiburg, studied Bacon’s works and carried on dangerous experiments of his own, so that he is ranked with Bacon for the honor. He was also the first one to rouse the interest of Europe in the great discovery.
And then began the first crude, clumsy efforts at gunmaking. Firearms were born.
Hand bombards and culverins were among the early types. Some of these were so heavy that a forked support had to be driven into the ground, and two men were needed, one to hold and aim, the other to prime and fire. How does that strike you for a duck-shooting proposition? Of course such a clumsy arrangement could only be used in war.
Improvements kept coming, however. Guns were lightened and bettered in shape. Somebody thought of putting a flash pan for the powder, by the side of the touch-hole, and now it was decided to fasten the slow-match, in a movable cock, upon the barrel and ignite it with a trigger. These matches were fuses of some slow-burning fiber, like tow, which would keep a spark for a considerable time. Formerly they had to be carried separately, but the new arrangement was a great convenience and made the matchlock. The cock, being curved like a snake, was called the “serpentine.”
The “Kentucky Rifle” with its flint-lock was accurate, but had to be muzzle-charged.]
Everybody knows what the flint-lock was like. You simply fastened a flake of flint in the cock and snapped it against a steel plate. This struck off sparks which fell into the flash-pan and fired the charge.