Gunpowder, for some time after the invention of artillery, was of a composition much weaker than what we now use, or than that ancient one mentioned by Marcus Græcus; but this, it is presumed, was owing to the weakness of their first pieces, rather than to the ignorance of a better mixture.
Graining.
The change of the proportion of the materials composing it was not the only improvement it received. The invention of graining it is doubtless a considerable advantage to it; for powder, at first, was always in the form of fine meal, such as it was reduced to by grinding the materials together. It is doubtful whether the first graining of powder was intended to increase its strength, or only to render it more convenient for the filling into small charges, and the charging of small arms, to which alone it was applied for many years, whilst meal-powder was still made use of in cannon. But at last the additional strength which the grained powder was found to acquire from the free passage of the fire between the grains, occasioned the meal-powder to be entirely laid aside.
Tartaglia wrote, 1537.
That powder was first used in meal, and continued in its old form for cannon long after the invention of graining it for small arms, are facts not to be contested. Tartaglia expressly asserts that in his time cannon-powder was in meal, and the musket-powder grained. William Bourne, 1577.And our countryman, William Bourne, in his “Art of Shooting in great Ordnaunce,” published forty years after Tartaglia, tells us, in chap. I, that serpentine powder, (which he opposes to corn, or grained-powder) should be as fine as sand, and as soft as flour: and in his third chapter he says that two pounds of corn-powder will go as far as three pounds of serpentine-powder.
Tartaglia on the proportions.
We learn from Tartaglia, that the cannon-powder was made of four parts saltpetre, one part sulphur, and one part charcoal; and the musket-powder of forty-eight parts saltpetre, seven parts sulphur, and eight parts charcoal; or of eighteen parts saltpetre, two parts sulphur, and three parts charcoal. These compositions for musket powder are very near the present standard; the first having, in one hundred pounds of powder, about one pound of saltpetre more than is at present allowed, and the second three pounds more.
Nye’s treatise on the proportions.
Nye, in his treatise on fireworks, gives the proportions of the ingredients, and the dates when they are used, thus in 1380 equal parts of each were employed. This would be about as efficient as a common squib of the present time. In 1410, three parts saltpetre, two sulphur, and two charcoal. In 1520, for the best powder, four parts saltpetre, one sulphur, and one charcoal, and afterwards, five saltpetre, one sulphur, and one charcoal.
Early gunpowder mere mixture.