Early Explosives

Grenades, projectiles, fireworks and offensive weaponry

illustrations from a 16th century German manuscript

Beyond the novel inclusion of our rocket bird and turbo cat - up top - this 1584 treatise on explosive devices appears to illustrate weaponry seen in earlier manuscripts and offers no new technologies for the Renaissance commando types.

The sketches show various types of barrel bombs, hand grenades, nasty fragmentation/shrapnel explosives, cannons, throwing stars caltrops (anti-personnel ground spikes), unsophisticated spear and staff-mounted 'rockets' or bombs, catherine or pin wheel fireworks and your-guess-is-as-good-as-mine fire vessels and defensive emplacement stakes. Good to know that our modern evil ways build on the twisted imaginations of artistic forebears.

• Ms. Codex 109 ('Feuer Buech' or 'Feuerwerkbuch' - Fireworks Book) is an anonymous paper manuscript of ~230 leaves, including more than 30 colour sketches, hosted online in full by the University of Pennsylvania Libraries.
• The accompanying bibliographic description notes that the manuscript contents bears similarities with a Berlin work from the 1420s.
• Previously: Combat -- includes a number of similar illustrated Renaissance/Medieval military manuscripts and books (particularly: Artillery Firepower from a few decades later)
• Note: the images above are cropped slightly and a modest amount of background staining has been removed.
• ADDIT (Jan 2013) - @MitchFraas observes: "Here's another lovely explosive cat+bird illus. from a different Penn Ms. http://twitpic.com/bxgle8 "
• UPDATE !!: See: A Rocket Cat? Early Modern Explosives Treatises at Penn --> Mitch Fraas from the University of Pennsylvania Libraries has gathered together all the information that has surfaced since the Rocket Cat image (or Turbo Cat, as I originally dubbed it) careened around the interwebs. [Unique at Penn : blog homepage]
• Elsewhere: Twitter -<>- Delicious -<>- Pinboard.