[Sca-cooks] Gunpowder, not Noodles/Pasta

[johnna holloway]

Johnnae sends early am greetings.

My one book on Science and the Secrets of Nature(Eamon, 1994) suggested
several other sources on Bacon but somehow I am not tempted
to drive in and try to park on central campus today in 100 degree
heat to try and answer this. Of course, I rather like the book
by the British Librarian that asserted that Marco Polo never
went to China at all. She did a food history analysis of what
wasn't mentioned in his travels.
I suspect that there is a solid reason why the 1240 something dates
come up, and it maybe that there are Vatican records. Another
research angle would be to run this question from the other end
and go through the Chinese tech/sci lit that's now available in
English and see what that says. Which one of these years, I will
do with regard to food technology... but not anytime soon.
Eamon also suggested looking at Lynn White and Lynn Thorndyke
on medieval technology and the "secrets" literature.

Johnna Holloway

James Prescott wrote:
>
> At 22:49 -0400 2001-08-05, johnna holloway wrote:
> > I can cite a source for even earlier.
> >
> > Roger Bacon Philosopher,
> > surnamed DOCTOR MIRABILIS, b. at Ilchester, Somersetshire, about
> >                           1214; d. at Oxford, perhaps 11 June, 1294.
> >
> > "He was the first person in the
> > West to give exact directions for making gunpowder (1242); and,
> > though he knew that, if confined, it would have great power and
> > might be useful in war, he failed to speculate further."
> > from the New Catholic Encyclopedia and Encyclopedia Britannica.
> >
> > I'd have to wonder about the precision of the date unless the document
> > actually exists.
>
> >From Contamine, P.  _War in the Middle Ages_.  1984.  (Blackwell London).
> Page 139.
>
> "These inventions and techniques were transmitted to the West through
> the mediation of the Muslim world. An Andalusian botanist who died at
> Damascus in 1248 called saltpetre 'Chinese snow'.  In Persia the same
> Substance was called 'Chinese salt'.  Perhaps the Mongols used
> rudimentary firearms at the battle of Sajo in Hungary (1241).  From
> the middle of the thirteenth century the Moors put powder in various
> projectiles thrown by means of catapults and trebuchets.  In the
> West the first known recipe for gunpowder is that of Roger Bacon
> (1267)."
>
> "The presence of primitive guns (_sclopeti_, _sclopi_: blunderbuss)
> is mentioned at the time of the defence of Forli by Guido de
> Montefeltre in 1284, though this is an isolated and suspect reference."
>
> Bacon's work (_Opus majus_, 1267 and 1268) exists, though it was not
> published until 1733.
>
> This does leave open the possibility of information about gunpowder
> being brought to Europe by the Polos, later than Bacon had already
> learned and written of it.  If Bacon's work was not widely known
> then it is possible that many in Europe could have first learned
> of gunpowder from the Polos.
>
> Thorvald