Firearms History, Technology & Development

In our last post, we saw how Sicily was slowly losing dominance in the sulfur trade and how Britain became a major sulfur producer using th...

In our last post , we saw how sulfur was extracted and purified in Italy (mainly Sicily) and then further purified in England for the purpos...

In our last post , we saw how the Chinese extracted sulfur from pyrites (fool's gold) and used it in gunpowder. In some parts of the wor...

In our last couple of posts, we looked at some historical methods used to produce charcoal , one of the key ingredients of black powder . In...

In our last post , we looked at the charcoal manufacturing process, as it was done from the 14th to the early 20th century. In today's p...

After spending the last few weeks studying the history of saltpeter manufacturing around the world, we will spend some time today studying ...

In the second half of the nineteenth century, people began to look for other sources of natural nitrates besides the plains of India. Today,...