History
Developed in the second-century BCE, by the ancient Chinese, fireworks are the oldest form of rockets and the most simplistic. Originally fireworks had religious purposes but were later adapted for military purposes during the Middle Ages in the form of "flaming arrows." During the tenth and thirteenth centuries the Mongols and the Arabs brought the major component of these early rockets to the West: gunpowder. Although the cannon and gun became the major developments from the eastern introduction of gunpowder, a tickling of rockets also resulted. These rockets were essentially enlarged fireworks which propelled, further than the long bow or cannon, packages of explosive gunpowder. During the late eighteenth century imperialistic wars, Colonel Congreve, developed his famed rockets, which travel range distances of four miles. The "rockets' red glare" in the American national anthem records the usage of rocket warfare, in its early form of military strategy, during the inspirational battle of Fort McHenry, where many soldiers were killed because of the rockets.
Read more about this topic: Rocket (firework)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There are two great unknown forces to-day, electricity and woman, but men can reckon much better on electricity than they can on woman.”
—Josephine K. Henry, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 15, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“A man will not need to study history to find out what is best for his own culture.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)