Maker
Photography by WIlliam Gurstelle
The Fire Drug
A maker’s history of black powder.
IT TRANSFORMED THE FATE OF NATIONS; it changed the way wars were fought, made weak countries strong and strong kingdoms weak. It ended the Middle Ages and ushered in the Renaissance with a bang. Its gush of hot, expanding gas blew away feudalism, for no longer could chain-mailed knights on horseback, invulnerable to hand-held weapons and arrows, maintain domination over their fiefdoms. In my estimation, black powder, or gunpowder, is the most important chemical discovery in the history of mankind.
For a thousand years, black powder was ...
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