The History and Mystery of Fireworks

In the 1970s, American Fireworks, a family-run pyrotechnics company in Hudson, Ohio, used a “home run box” to offer quick and easy fireworks displays for the Cleveland Indians (now the Cleveland Guardians) baseball games.The red wooden crate had metal silos to store the rockets. Each switch on the control panel allowed the operator to set off a different firing sequence. This setup instantly triggered the display whenever a Cleveland batter hit a home run. Before computerized firing systems became common, panels like this represented the state of the art. But they did not eliminate human error. On 15 September 2015, the technician in charge of the Indians’ pyrotechnics accidentally set off the fireworks when the opposing team hit a home run. The embarrassed technician was caught on camera holding his head in his hands. This home run box and control panel [left] were used to launch fireworks during Cleveland Indians games. The rockets were housed in metal silos within the box.Left: Jahna Auerbach/Science History Institute; Right: American FireworksThe Early History of FireworksFireworks are one of the many Song Dynasty inventions that migrated from China through the Middle East and into Europe by way of trade routes. Around 200 B.C.E, the Chinese invented small firecrackers by simply tossing pieces of bamboo into a fire. The air inside the bamboo would expand and crack the wood, and the pop supposedly scared away evil spirits. After the invention of gunpowder—a mixture of sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate—about a thousand years later, some clever person thought to pack the powder into the bamboo tubes and ignite them, launching the first fireworks—and the first rockets—into the sky. John Bate’s popular 1634 book on fireworks described fire wheels [left] and a flying dragon [right], consisting of a dragon-shaped rocket that sped along a rope. SSPL/Getty ImagesBy the Renaissance, specialized schools for pyrotechnics had emerged across Italian city-states, and Eur