Editing Roger Bacon (section)

====Gunpowder====
[[File:137-ROGER BACON DISCOVERS GUNPOWDER.jpg|thumb|right|200px|"Roger Bacon discovers gunpowder", "whereby [[Guy Fawkes]] was made possible",<ref>{{citation |last=Nye |first=Bill |author-link=Edgar Wilson Nye |display-authors=0 |url=https://archive.org/details/billnyescomichis00nyebrich |title=Bill Nye's Comic History of England |date=1896 |page=[https://archive.org/stream/billnyescomichis00nyebrich#page/136/mode/2up 136] |publisher=Chicago, Thompson and Thomas }}</ref> an image from ''[[Edgar Wilson Nye|Bill Nye]]'s Comic History of England''<ref>{{citation |last=Nye |first=Bill |author-link=Edgar Wilson Nye |display-authors=0 |url=https://archive.org/details/billnyescomichis00nyebrich |title=Bill Nye's Comic History of England |date=1896 |page=[https://archive.org/stream/billnyescomichis00nyebrich#page/136/mode/2up 137] |publisher=Chicago, Thompson and Thomas }}</ref>]]
A passage in the ''{{lang|la|Opus Majus}}'' and another in the ''{{lang|la|Opus Tertium}}'' are usually taken as the first European descriptions of a mixture containing the essential ingredients of [[gunpowder]]. [[J. R. Partington|Partington]] and others have come to the conclusion that Bacon most likely witnessed at least one demonstration of [[Yuan dynasty|Chinese]] [[firecracker]]s, possibly obtained by Franciscans—including Bacon's friend [[William of Rubruck]]—who visited the [[Mongol Empire]] during this period.{{sfnp|Needham|Lu|Wang|1987|pp=48–50}}{{refn|group=n|"Europeans were prompted by all this to take a closer interest in happenings far to the east. Four years after the invasion of 1241, the pope sent an ambassador to the Great Khan's capital in Mongolia. Other travellers followed later, of whom the most interesting was [[William of Rubruck]] (or Ruysbroek). He returned in 1257, and in the following year there are reports of experiments with gunpowder and rockets at Cologne. Then a friend of William of Rubruck, Roger Bacon, gave the first account of gunpowder and its use in fireworks to be written in Europe. A form of gunpowder had been known in China since before AD 900, and as mentioned earlier... Much of this knowledge had reached the Islamic countries by then, and the saltpetre used in making gunpowder there was sometimes referred to, significantly, as 'Chinese snow'."{{sfnp|Pacey|1991|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=X7e8rHL1lf4C&pg=PA45 45]}}}} The most telling passage reads:
<blockquote>We have an example of these things (that act on the senses) in [the sound and fire of] that children's toy which is made in many [diverse] parts of the world; i.e. a device no bigger than one's thumb. From the violence of that salt called saltpetre [together with sulphur and willow charcoal, combined into a powder] so horrible a sound is made by the bursting of a thing so small, no more than a bit of parchment [containing it], that we find [the ear assaulted by a noise] exceeding the roar of strong thunder, and a flash brighter than the most brilliant lightning.{{sfnp|Needham|Lu|Wang|1987|pp=48–50}} </blockquote>

At the beginning of the 20th century, [[Henry William Lovett Hime]] of the [[Royal Artillery]] published the theory that Bacon's ''{{lang|la|Epistola}}'' contained a [[cryptogram]] giving a recipe for the gunpowder he witnessed.<ref>{{cite EB1911 |last=Hodgkinson |first=William Richard Eaton |wstitle=Gunpowder |mode=cs2}}</ref> The theory was criticised by [[Lynn Thorndike|Thorndike]] in a 1915 letter to ''[[Science (journal)|Science]]''{{sfnp|Thorndike|1915}} and several books, a position joined by [[M. M. Pattison Muir|Muir]],{{sfnp|Stillman|1924|p=202}} [[John Maxson Stillman]],{{sfnp|Stillman|1924|p=202}} [[Robert Steele (medievalist)|Steele]],{{sfnp|Steele|1928}} and [[George Sarton|Sarton]].{{sfnp|Sarton|1948|p=958}} [[Joseph Needham|Needham]] et al. concurred with these earlier critics that the additional passage did not originate with Bacon{{sfnp|Needham|Lu|Wang|1987|pp=48–50}} and further showed that the proportions supposedly deciphered (a 7:5:5 ratio of [[Niter|saltpetre]] to [[charcoal]] to [[Sulfur|sulphur]]) as not even useful for firecrackers, burning slowly with a great deal of smoke and failing to ignite inside a gun barrel.{{sfnp|Needham|Lu|Wang|1987|loc=Vol.&nbsp;V, Pt.&nbsp;7, p.&nbsp;358}} The ~41% [[nitrate]] content is too low to have explosive properties.{{sfnp|Hall|1999|p=xxiv}}

[[File:Friar Bacon.png|thumb|left|200px|Friar Bacon in his study{{sfnp|Baldwin|1905|p=64}}]]