Fire Arrows - The First Explosive Rockets
The origins of the first true explosives-based ballistic rocket are controversial, but it is typically accepted that the Chinese were one of the first civilizations to develop rockets as we know them today. Some time around the first century CE, the Chinese had developed a simple form of what is now known as black powder . The earliest usage of these powder charges was in religious ceremonies, where bamboo tubes would be filled with black powder and thrown into a fire. A few centuries later, the knowledge of gunpowder would be applied to the creation of the first fireworks in 600 CE . Small gunpowder charges would be used to launch larger explosives into the air. The Chinese would then take this one step further in 1232 CE, the first recorded date of the usage of so-called “fire arrows”, the first true explosive ballistic rocket. Prior to this date, in the Chinese war against the Mongols, flaming arrows had already been utilized by the Chinese for additional firepower on the battlefield. Around this time though, the idea of launching these fire arrows with gunpowder charges was developed. These early rockets were extremely simple, consisting of a tube closed at one end attached to a stick filled with gunpowder. Though it’s questionable how effective these early rockets truly were on the battlefield, they were probably extremely effective on a psychological level (Benson, 2010). Perhaps more importantly, these early rockets, being used as weapons of war, quickly proliferated through Eurasia, with the Mongols spreading the usage to the Middle East in their invasion of Baghdad . The design of these early rockets, therefore, spread solely through their usage in war – most countries by this point had already developed or stolen the idea of gunpowder. Eventually though, rockets would fall mostly into disuse as weapons of war (for the time being at any rate), by the time the 16th Century rolled around . From the 13th through 18th Centuries, rockets would primarily be experimented with.
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