CHAPTER V

COMPOUND FIREWORKS

Compound fireworks are those which are composed of a number of simple fireworks or units fixed to a framework or other device so that they produce a more elaborate effect than do single fireworks.

Probably the earliest form of compound firework was the wheel. After the sky rocket had become an established fact, it was a small step to tie rockets round a wheel, so that when fired they caused it to revolve.

Babington gives several devices based on the idea of imparting movement to a wheel by rockets: he describes horizontal and vertical wheels, which appear to be the same piece fired either horizontally or vertically. In neither case is there any further effect than the fire from the rockets tied to the periphery. His illustration shows no less than sixteen rockets to fire singly in succession, which would, by modern standards, make a rather lengthy and monotonous piece. He also describes ground wheels, which consist of two wheels fitted to an axle with a smaller wheel placed centrally between them. The centre wheel has rocket cases fitted to it, causing the whole arrangement to revolve and run along the ground. As an alternative he suggests substituting cases secured to the axle without a central wheel, so arranged that one being burnt out the second burns in the opposite direction and reverses the direction of the wheels. The device is now quite obsolete.

One interesting point is the method of communicating fire from one case to the next; quickmatch, as used to-day, had not then been invented. His method was to fasten the cases head to tail a short distance apart by wrapping and tying paper round in the form of a tube, the space so formed containing some mealed powder.

He also describes what he calls fixed wheels, which are in effect the fixed sun of to-day; that is, a framework with cases arranged radially so that the fire is thrown out from the centre.

As variations of the above, he suggests various effects such as “a fixed wheel which shall give divers reports,” “which shall cast forth divers fisgigs, and likewise as many reports or breakers,” “which shall cast forth many rockets into the ayre.” The latter is evidently the prototype of a piece known later as the rocket wheel, popular for some time, but little used at the present, the objection to it being that there is no control over the direction in which the rockets fly from it. The wheel revolves horizontally, and projects a series of rockets into the air as it revolves.

During the following century, as compound fireworks developed in this country, the Italian and French nomenclature was introduced, many of which survive at the present time.

The pyrotechnists of the eighteenth century seem to have delighted in inventing new terms, possibly with the idea of impressing the layman. Frézier, writing over a hundred years later than Babington, records very little advance in revolving fireworks, except in the matter of names. He classifies all revolving pieces as girandoles. This word appears in pyrotechny very frequently; curiously enough, nearly every writer has attached a different meaning to it. Frézier explains that the word is derived from girare—to revolve or gyrate, from the Greek.

Bate applied this meaning to it. He says, “How to make gironels or fire wheeles.” He is, however, the only English writer to do so; others use it to mean a flight of rockets, and occasionally for an elaborate fixed piece of the fountain type.

Ruggieri and Sarti, both Italians, used it in the sense of a “flight” of rockets in the programme of their Green Park display in 1749. Ruggieri the younger, however, applies it to a specific kind of revolving firework in his book, and introduces a new word—girande—to which he applies the same meaning as the one generally accepted in this country for girandole. The confusion of these two words, which have the same derivation, may be the explanation of the duplication of meaning, or it may lie in the fact that the name was also applied to the rocket wheel previously mentioned, which both revolves and throws up rockets.

Frézier shows a wheel similar to that given by Babington, and variations on the double saxon, a fixed sun also, as do most early writers, double line rockets to run backwards and forwards and variations. These latter, which appear to have been very popular at this period, were known in France as “courantins.” Bate calls them “swevels,” other early writers “runners on the line.”

The above-mentioned, together with some rather intricate but impracticable appearing water devices, make up the compound fireworks in Frézier’s book.

It seems, however, that he must have been behind his day in this branch of the art, as the Aix-la-Chapelle peace display appears to have included several elaborate pieces which, even allowing for the usual exaggeration of the programme, must have required considerable skill and knowledge in construction. These were mostly what were called regulated or regulating pieces, generally described as of a certain number of mutations. The pieces were, and are, although the old descriptions are now dispensed with, so constructed that after being lit they go through a series of alterations in form and movement without further attention.

Some of those described in old works would seem to have required more than a slight element of luck for their successful performance.

To-day it is often found more advantageous to make a second lighting in cases where there is a danger of premature ignition, the effect to the spectators being identical, and the successful functioning of the piece secured. This does not apply to all pieces of this nature, as with modern safety fuse the pyrotechnist has considerable advantage over the earlier practitioners.

The modern spectator is only concerned with the effect produced, not by the means adopted to produce it. It is difficult to-day to realise the position occupied by the pyrotechnist of the eighteenth century. He carried out his work personally, with of course trained assistants, and occupied a position similar to the artist or sculptor. Each piece was looked upon as a work of art, the personal effort of the pyrotechnic artist. Ruggieri gives some idea of this in the following passage from his book:

“It was in the month of July, 1743, that my father and my uncles Ruggieri exhibited for the first time at the Theatre de la Comédie Italienne and before the King, the passage of fire from a moving to a fixed piece.

“This ingenious contrivance at first astonished the scientists of the day, who said when it was explained to them that nothing could be more simple and that any one could have done it at once.”

He then explains the method of construction, which is to lead from the back end of one of the turning cases through the hollow centre of the axle to the lighter of the fixed piece situated behind it.

The development of fixed and mechanical pieces was made possible by the introduction of quickmatch.

When this actually took place is uncertain. Frézier describes its making similarly to that in use to-day, under the name of “étoupilles.” Bate uses the word “stouple,” evidently a corruption of the French. He gives no actual description of the making of this, but it appears to be of “cotton weeke” dipped in “aqua vitæ wherein camphire hath been dissolved.” This would produce only a slow-burning match unless it was his intention to use it wet, in which case the burning of the spirits of wine might quicken the effect. It would, however, be quite out of the question to construct a piece of any elaboration with such materials.

Quickmatch is manufactured to-day in the following manner. Cotton wick is run through a pan containing a paste composed of gunpowder and starch. It is wound on a frame six feet in length, dusted with mealed powder and dried. When dry it is cut off the frame and threaded into paper tubes or “pipes” of larger diameter, leaving an air space round the match.

Before threading in the tubes it is known in the trade as “raw match,” and is used for priming and similar uses, and in this state will only burn quite slowly.

Quickmatch is used to connect the units of all pieces. Display cases have a “cap” formed of a few turns of paper pasted on the case at the lighting end. When a piece is fitted up the cases are tied to the cleats provided to receive them on the framework; they are then “lead up.” A length of quickmatch has a small piece cut out of the pipe to allow the fire to flash through, it is then doubled at that point and inserted in the cap, which is gathered in and tied round securely. This is continued round the piece, each case having match entering and leaving the cap, and in some cases a further length connecting one series with another. This leading up of set pieces is work requiring skill and knowledge which is only gained by experience. An amateur at a first attempt might possibly be successful in lighting all the cases on a piece, but he would be very unlikely to produce that instant and symmetrical ignition which denotes the skilled pyrotechnist.

The smaller wheels have turning cases, that is, small rockets to give them motion; these burn through very rapidly, and the continuation of movement is provided for by capping the turning cases at either end and leading them up vent to head in series; the motive power for the larger display pieces is provided by gerbs, which, from the nature of their fire, give more effect than would rocket cases, and have the further advantage of burning longer.

It would not be possible in the present work to give a complete catalogue of the varieties of pieces which have been produced, but the list given by Ruggieri is typical of the whole, and includes many of the smaller compound pieces in use to-day for shop and small display work.

The larger display pieces are generally designed and redesigned season by season by pyrotechnists, and are certainly being elaborated and improved. They, however, fall generally into certain classes in the same way as do those given by Ruggieri. His classification is as follows:

1. Stationary fireworks. 2. Fireworks turning vertically. 3. Mixed fireworks or fixed and turning. 4. Fireworks turning horizontally or on a pivot. 5. Built-up pieces turning on a pivot. 6. Cut-out pieces and transparencies.

Of these, the last mentioned class are now obsolete: they consisted of transparent and silhouette pictures or designs illuminated from behind. He also includes both simple and compound fireworks in each class, but as the former have already been dealt with they will be ignored here.

Class 1. (1) Glorys, fans and “pates d’oie” or goose foot, synonymous with our expression crow’s foot.

Glory was a term used also in this country to signify fixed suns, as mentioned above. Fans were cases five or more in number, arranged as the name indicated, and pates d’oie, three similarly arranged.

(2) Mosaiques. These are geometrical designs formed by arranging gerbs or fixt on framework, so that their fire forms a symmetrical pattern. The effect is heightened by saxons in suitable positions, and in large devices of this nature, small wheels, also formerly, the now obsolete fixed or five-pointed star.

This type includes what are now called “lattice poles,” a series of poles provided with cleats so that the fire of the cases crosses, forming a lattice of sparks; also the more elaborate “carpet piece.”

(3) Feux croisés. These were similar in conception to the above, except that the design is circular or based on the circle or wheel form; this type is represented by the “fixt piece” of to-day, which is constructed up to considerable dimensions, the large fixt piece at the Crystal Palace often measuring sixty feet across the fire.

(4) Palm Trees. These consist of a framework intended to suggest the form of a palm, provided with cleats to take the cases.

(5) Bouquets. These he describes also as a kind of tree different from palm trees; his illustration shows that they were similar to the modern lattice-pole with the difference that the cleats were not symmetrically arranged.

To-day the word bouquet is applied to Roman candles arranged in what he called “pates d’oie.”

(6) Cascade. This device needs no explanation. He says that Chinese fire is the best composition for such a piece; this remained true up to the introduction of the aluminium into pyrotechny, when the “weird white waterfall” became a feature of the Crystal Palace displays, being 200 feet long and 90 feet high.

(7) Decorations in coloured fire. This heading introduces the lancework set piece of to-day.

The development of this branch since 1865 has been very marked. As will be seen from the description of the lancework pieces carried out at the Crystal Palace, the subjects dealt with have been of extraordinary variety. Up to the beginning of the nineteenth century pyrotechnists had failed to realise the possibilities of lancework. This was undoubtedly due in a great measure to the fewness of colours available. Ruggieri appears to have used lancework to outline architectural designs, evidently a survival of the temples or theatres of earlier years. In his time, and even as late as the middle of the nineteenth century, any subject of a pictorial nature was depicted by the use of scenery or transparencies. Lancework was, as Ruggieri describes it, merely “decorations in coloured fire.” The lances of his day were considerably thicker than those at present in use, which are about the diameter of a lead pencil. They were also spaced further apart and were in some cases “bounced,” as are fixed cases of the present day.

The modern method of constructing a lancework set piece is as follows: An outline drawing of the subject is made in which all unnecessary lines are eliminated. This is ruled in square of such size that in the proportion one square to a foot the completed piece will be of the size required.

Frames are then laid out on the drawing-floor: these are of light battens forming foot squares, and of a convenient size for handling, generally ten feet by five feet.

The drawing is then transferred to the floor with the assistance of the squared lines, and the design followed by nailing on light wood strips or thin rattan cane.

The lines thus indicated are then “pegged,” that is, pegs or small wire nails pointed at either end, are driven in at intervals of about four inches. The lances, whose construction has already been described in Chapter IV, have their ends glued and are pushed on to the pegs so that they stand vertically from the framework. The frames are then led up with quickmatch, secured by pins driven into the priming. The match is then pierced with a small awl above the priming, and secured and protected by a strip of paper pasted over it and round the case of the lance. The piece is then ready for hoisting into position and firing.

Formerly, and sometimes now on the Continent, the match was secured by a wire passing through the case near the top, which was twisted over the match.

Ruggieri, under this head, describes a method of illuminating by impregnating wick similar to that used for matchmaking, with a mixture of sulphur, antimony, and saltpetre. This was wired on to a metal framework. He says it is better than lancework for outlining curves, volutes, etc., as the line is continuous. This difficulty is disposed of in modern English lancework by the closer spacing of lances on curves rendered possible by the smaller lances now used.

He also remarks that this method was rarely used in his time and it is now quite discontinued.

Another device of which he seems proud was a palm tree, the leaves of which were of thin metal from which project spikes upon which was hung cotton impregnated with a composition composed of “vert-de-gris, vitriol blue and sel ammoniac” (copper acetate, copper sulphate and ammonium chloride).

Immediately before firing the cotton was soaked with alcohol. Actually this composition can hardly be considered pyrotechnic; what takes place is that the alcohol burns, and the flame thus created is coloured with the copper present in the salts. The whole arrangement is too cumbersome and involved for modern use, but at the time of its inception, when colour was practically unknown, no doubt it attracted great admiration.