A concise history of the gunpowder industry.

Although gunpowder was available in England from the fourteenth century onwards, it was not until the wars with Spain during the reign of Elizabeth I that the nation began to produce its own. This early explosive compound - a mixture of saltpetre, charcoal and sulphur, with urine and horse dung added for good measure - proved an invaluable weapon, and gunpowder remained the only explosive available for firing guns and blasting in quarries until the Victorian era.

This book outlines the processes and history of its manufacture, from the development of gunpowder as a propellant in the fourteenth century, through its adoption as a blasting agent in the seventeenth, to the introduction of improved varieties shortly before its eclipse by high explosives.