/sci/ - Science & Math

>>15660253
>Might have? All evidence points to the Chinese discovering gunpowder first, and almost certainly transmitted to the West. The same exact nature of the ingredients, down to the useless ingredients, strongly suggest so.
>suggest
Berthold Schwarz developed the gunpowder actually used in European weapons, especially in guns and cannons. The formula that Roger Bacon wrote down, which is originally from Chinese alchemysts, is pyrotechnic, not explosive, due to all the useless shit thrown in (I think even honey is in there?). Think more Greek fire type weapon than ballistics. They certainly had no scientific understanding of it (neither did Europe really until later advancements in Chemistry and it's only fully understood by the time smokeless gunpowder is invented).

Mongols definitely were the first to use pyrotechnics in their invasion of Europe and other places, this was mostly fire lances. Definitely the precursor to the gun in Europe I don't dispute this. Although this came only 300 years later and fire lances are precursors, but not guns in themselves.

>matchlock arquebus, probably came from Turkey.
Possibly. This is disputed as the oldest artifact is from Hungarian Black army soldiers. Either way it's in Europe, as is the first mortar. Hungarians were famous for their cannon designs and hired by Mehmet II to breach Constantinople. It is these conflicts where the technology was developed before Maximilian I industrialised it.

Most of the other narratives are massive stretches of the defition of these technologies.