An important driving force for the development of science and technology is war. ** often represents the highest level of science and technology in an era, therefore, the development of science and technology and the progress of ** are often synchronized.
The essence of * is to be able to effectively apply energy to each other in order to destroy each other, in ancient times, the ancestor of mankind, modern Homo sapiens, defeated Neanderthals in competition, archaeologists believe that the former has learned to shoot arrows, while the latter has not, ** The difference in ** is one of the reasons for the extinction of the latter. In the age of cold weapons, bows and arrows were the most effective long-range attack tools mastered by humans, and in order to transfer energy to distant places more quickly than bows and arrows, firearms were needed.
During the Tang Dynasty, the Chinese invented gunpowder. According to Joseph Needham, gunpowder was first used in warfare at the time of the fifth generation. In 1232, someone in Shouchun County of the Southern Song Dynasty invented a bamboo musket. The Southern Song Dynasty Chen Gui's "Records of Defending the City" recorded artillery made of copper and iron. The earliest metal cannon found today was made during the Yuan Dynasty, around 1323. After that, the Arabs acquired gunpowder-making technology from the Chinese and applied it to the military, placing gunpowder in iron tubes to fire arrows.
In the Middle Ages, whether in Europe or China, the biggest problem in making gunpowder weapons was that they could not produce barrels and barrels that could withstand the power of gunpowder. Until the 14th century, a large number of armies equipped with artillery, arquebuses and rockets (arrows) in the world first appeared in China, when the army of the Ming Dynasty in China had infantry, artillery (gun) soldiers, and cavalry to cooperate in combat, and in some wars used the three-line method of warfare, that is, the first row of soldiers to shoot, the second row to prepare, and the third row to load ammunition. However, the Ming Dynasty's skills in manufacturing guns were not high, so that in the foreign wars at the end of the Ming Dynasty, the cannons used by the Ming army with small size, large caliber and long range had to be imported from Portugal. At that time, people called it the Franc machine according to the homonym of the place where the cannon was produced.
In the history of the development of firearms, the first landmark invention was the arquebus, which went through a long process. From the 15th to the 16th century, many people in Europe and Central Asia (then the Ottoman Turkish Empire) independently invented this **, and then went through a series of improvements to become able to be widely used on the battlefield**. 2 Arquebuses resemble today's rifles in shape, but they are two different things, the biggest difference from each other is the method of firing.
Since the barrel of the early guns was difficult to solve the problem of exploding, the barrel was made of cast iron, the front and back were blocked, and the rear was blocked, so that the gunpowder and projectiles were loaded from the front, rather than from the back as in today's rifles. The approximate sequence of arquebus operation is to first load gunpowder from the front of the barrel, then load **, and then use a long needle to reach into the barrel from the front and press it (at this point, the filling of ammunition is completed); Then light the fire letter; Finally, in order to facilitate ignition, flint cannot be used, and the shooter should prepare a long, slowly burning rope and ignite it with an arquebus. From this process, it is not difficult to see that the firing speed of early arquebuses was very slow.