Ian L-K

I think I'll give the Bates book a miss, it's a little out of my price range. There is at least one other copy for sale by the way, but that's on for £12,500 I've found a reference to it elsewhere and that also says the fireworks section is derivative of earlier English and European books. Pity it doesn't say which ones.
I've also found a site that shows some extracts from the book, http://special.lib.g...th/nov2003.html
The fireworks part of the content looks very similar to what is in Babington's book.


I've managed to get the Pyrotechnia by Babington. Or at least the first 88 pages, which is the part dealing with fireworks. The remaining 280 pages are about Geometry, including over 200 pages of mathematical tables. Interesting from the gunnery point of view but I think the Compleat Gunner is better.

The Pyrotechnia fireworks section runs at 140 Mb as a set of jpgs. A bit too big for email but if anyone wants it I'll put it on a file sharing site.

Thanks for the book information. I'll be looking out for those.
At present I have The Compleat Gunner, mostly artillery matters but with a section on making fireworks. it gives references to books by a Mr. Bate and a Mr. Babington.
I've found the one by John Babington, Pyrotechnia, 1635 but there is no title for Mr Bate's book.
There's a scanned version of Pyrotechnia online but each page has to be selected, magnified and then downloaded individually. There are 376 pages so it will take a while to get them. If anyone wants it I'll try to make it available when I've got it all.

Re the suggestions from Crystal Palace Fireworks.
Waltham Abbey. I've been there a couple of times doing Napoleonic events. They've got some good displays on making and transporting powder but I didn't see anything on non-military usage. It's a bit out of my way now as I'm in Devon. I used to live in St Albans so it was a local excursion then.

R.A. Museum. Much the same as Waltham Abbey. I'm ex R.A. so I've been there a few times. I even got some bits to repair a 25 pounder from them.
Good for cannon, which was why I went, but the only fireworks were Congreve rockets.

Haven't tried the libraries yet, but now with some possible book titles I'll see what they've got.