FIRE LANCE - We Owe IT All To LANCE:

- GUNS.

Yeah I know, - they're all going to be BANNED but ..

The FIRE LANCE 火枪 seems to have been the earliest recorded use of gunpowder in hand-held tools .. starting it all.

Experts reckon that in the 10th Century some Chinese genius tried fixing a bamboo tube stuffed full of gunpowder next to his spear's point to burn & blind the opposition before impaling them. - Next step was to mix a handful of hard-stuff like broken pottery or gravel into the gunpowder mix. (- Well like shrapnel .. but Henry Shrapnel supposedly didn't invent his shells until 1784 eh.)

Then they realized that the shot and flame was so effective that you didn't really need the spear tips .. these might have seemed something like the fireworks we have called .. "Roman Candles".

https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2015/08/24/dual-wielding-roman-candle-cannons/

- The range of these earliest 'PROTO GUNS' was around three meters - ten foot plus.

These fighters had to carry a suspended fire-pot hanging-about to light their bundle of fire-lances via a 'slow match'. - At various times they tried other tube materials made from wound paper and iron.

"Paper" is not so silly as it sounds .. as Chinese lamellar  "White Paper Armour" was very functional & even somewhat effective against musket ball and bayonet  - being made from 30 to 60 layers of bonded laminations of silk or bark paper .. think "composite materials".

Early government technicians were of course developing other gunpowder engines - BOMBS & CANNON simultaneously.

14th Century Swiss Gunner.

For the next 500 years - these "black-powder" arms were improved, developed and refined from that very first idea of a tube packed with an explosive material - until breech loaded self-contained cartridges replaced the muzzle loading process .

Marty K.