Schwartz, Berthold

A mixture known as black powder revolutionized the art of warfare whenever it was applied to the propulsion of missiles. Black powder is a mixture of potassium nitrate (saltpeter), charcoal, and sulfur in varying proportions, granulation, and purity. A typical composition of a modern black powder is saltpeter 75%, charcoal 15%, and sulfur 10%.7 A mixture of saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur with other ingredients was used in China and India in the eleventh century for incendiary and pyrotechnic purposes long before true black powder was invented.8 History often deals in conjecture and opinion and it is not known for certain when and by whom black powder was invented, or when and by whom it was applied to the propulsion of a missile from a firearm. The composition of black powder was first recorded by English Franciscan monk Roger Bacon in 1249, but he did not apply it to the propulsion of a missile from a firearm. This use of black powder is usually credited to a German Franciscan monk Berthold Schwartz in the early fourteenth century.9... 

Another story is that the fourteenth-century German monk and alchemist Berthold Schwartz was the inventor of modern firearms. According to this version of events, it was in Freiburg, Germany, about a century after Roger Bacon s forays into the alchemy of explosives, that the black Monk Berthold married gunpowder with a workable firearm. Berthold s ultimate fate is uncertain. He may have either accidentally blown himself up—the most probable outcome, if he had in fact existed at all—or even been executed because of his infernal discoveries. In fact, very little documentation of his life exists at all ... 

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