Talk:Gunpowder/Archive 5

message: Both myself and Eiorgiomugini have identified various good points in the Blackpowder article as well as some poor points - particularly poor referencing (and in my case, found direct copying of text from unacknowledged sources). We have both made attempts to improve that article. Today I was intending to layout a new framework with the aim of doubling, or more, the size of that article; covering ancient history, and from a western viewpoint its production and use from Medieval times through to the 1960s when the UK ceased manufacturing it commercially. However, Gunpowder, this article, already covers the same topic area. My proposal is to merge the two articles into Gunpowder and make the Blackpowder article a redirect page. I would like, also, to aim to double the size of the combined article. Pyrotec 11:31, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Note of clarification. My knowledge only extends to a western view point; both articles include the prehistory of gunpowder and add information from Arab and Chinese sources. These should also be expanded article, but it is something that I am not able to do myself.Pyrotec 11:45, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge with [[Blackpowder]] 

message: Joseph Needham was both a biochemist and a historian. His work cited, A History of Science and Civilisation in China is not a work of biochemistry. It is a work of history. In addition, he is the only biochemist cited here. E's rephrasing, "Biochemists like Joseph Needham," makes it sound as if there are two camps, historians and biochemists, and Needham, writing as a biochemist, uses peculiar terminology. The opposite is true. Needham, as a biochemist, retired from teaching, so that he could write a history of science and civilisation in China. Needham, writing as a historian, has introduced a certain terminology that has been followed by other historians. It has not been followed (nor has it not been followed by other biochemists), because biochemists, writing as such, do not write histories of gunpowder. Ocanter 19:11, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well I have a copy of Needham, Volume 5, Part 7 in front of me. It's authors are listed as: Joseph Needham, sometime Master of Gonville and Caius college, Cambridge, Director of the East Asian History of Science Library, Cambridge, Honorary Professor of Academia Sinica. In collaboration with: Ho Ping-Yu (Ho Peng Yoke) Ph.D., Professor of Chinese in the University of Hongkong. Lu Gwei-Djen, Ph.D. Fellow of Robinson College Cambridge, Associate Director of the East Asian History of Science Library. and Wang Ling, Ph.D. Emeritus Professorial Fellow, Department of Far Eastern History, Institute of Advanced Studies, Australian National University, Canberra. They all seem to be historians to me. Also (page xxxii) Needham adds that the volume was reviewed by the former Deputy Keeper of the Armouries at H.M. Tower of London and that some experimental trials of gunpowders containing different nitrate percentages were carried out at the Royal Armament Research and Development Establishment, Fort Halstead. So that suggests that present day (well 1980s) explosives experts reviewed it.Pyrotec 20:18, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

text: I guess LOC goes by IP address, not cookies. It's a lame site, sorry. I'll try to find a more citable catalog site. But you can look up the title yourself and see that it is under the history subject heading. Ocanter 20:40, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Biochemists 

message: Can I suggest that this war over whether Needham was a historian or a biologist, or both, is stopped. It is relevant.
: Needham, Volume 5, Part 7 (1986 edition), Page 108. The word 'gunpowder', widely defined, should include all mixtures of saltpetre, sulphur and carbonaceous material; but any composition not containing charcoal, as for example those which incorporated honey, may be termed 'proto-gunpowder'. Our word gunpowder arises from the fact that Europe knew it only for cannon or hand-guns. In China, however prototype mixtures were known to alchemists, physicians and perhaps fireworks technicians, for their deflagrative properties, some time before they began to be used as weapons. Hence the chinese name for gunpowder, huo yao, literally 'fire-chemical' or 'fire drug'. One also has to note that although a couple of centuries of the earlier stage of proto-gunpowder occurred in China, it never appeared in Europe at all - this in itself is an argument of some weight for diffusion from Asia.
: The Contents of Volume 5, Part 7, Military Technology is:
* (3) Ancestry (I): Incendiary Warfare
* (4) Naphtha, Greek Fire, and petrol flame-throwers
* (5) Ancestry (II): The recognition and purification of saltpetre
* (6) Proto-gunpowder and gunpowder
*      (i) The earliest alchemical tentatives and experiments
*     (ii) The Sung formulae.
* (7) ----
It seems to me that Needham's definition of gunpowder is similar to modern day - but the composition is not necessarily constrained by proportions.
: So I suggest that those of you that know more about this topic remove conflicting comments from the article, otherwise I will.Pyrotec 21:19, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Definition of Gunpowder 

message: The author spends the first part of the article saying how illegal reloading is, yet never mentiones that it is legal in all 50 states and Canada.  Theronpatrick 02:31, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Legal Issues