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Pyrotechnics
The word pyrotechnics refers to the art, craft and science of fireworks. As such, it is related to a variety of arts and sciences - as an underdeveloped art, it is nevertheless comparable to many other human arts, such as music, theatre and film; as a science, it attempts to understand and quantify the chemical and physical phenomena that characterise pyrotechnic reactions.
As a craft and art, pyrotechnics originated around 1st century AD in China, with the invention of black powder. As a science, however, pyrotechnics is quite young. The basic phenomena of flame and colour production are now well established, but novel effects and novel materials still continue to be discovered. |
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Light created time and space. Time and space are the limits set to any firework display.
The time which is given to us to admire this marvellous display of light. - The space in which this shining splendour unfolds and repeatedly discovers new metaphors for the myth of the big bang.
The longer and the more expansively such
a magnificent spectacle extends its fiery wings before our very eyes, the more ingenious and precise must be the technology behind it.
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Pyrotechnics is the art of manufacturing or setting off fireworks. Also called pyrotechny. The word pyrotechnics refers to the art, craft and science of fireworks. As such, it is related to a variety of arts and sciences - as an underdeveloped art, it is nevertheless comparable to many other human arts, such as music, theatre and film; as a science, it attempts to understand and quantify the chemical and physical phenomena that characterise pyrotechnic reactions.
Today's rockets are remarkable collections of human ingenuity that have their roots in the science and technology of the past. |
They are natural outgrowths of literally thousands of years of experimentation and research on rockets and rocket propulsion.
One of the first devices to successfully employ the principles essential to rocket flight was a wooden bird. The writings of Aulus Gellius, a Roman, tell a story of a Greek named Archytas who lived in the city of Tarentum, now a part of southern Italy. Somewhere around the year 400 B.C., Archytas mystified and amused the citizens of Tarentum by flying a pigeon made of wood. Escaping steam propelled the bird suspended on wires. The pigeon used the action-reaction principle, which was not stated as a scientific law until the 17th century.
About three hundred years after the pigeon, another Greek, Hero of Alexandria, invented a similar rocket-like device called an aeolipile. It, too, used steam as a propulsive gas.
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