A seventeenth-century Chinese bomb with fuse, of a kind used for firing into the clouds in an attempt to precipitate rain. The gunpowder is wrapped in paper and sealed with wax, and the fuse is impregnated with gunpowder.

A reconstruction, from a medieval drawing and textual descriptions, of a fourteenth-century 'bees' nest' rocket-launcher. The rockets are strapped near the tips of the arrows.

The first of all multi- stage rockets, the 'fire- dragon issuing from the water', of the early or mid fourteenth century, which was used in naval engagements. When the rockets near the head burnt out, they lit fuses which ignited the second-stage rockets at the rear. The tube with the dragon's head was five feet long, and the fuses ran inside the body. This rocket flew in a flat trajectory, three or four feet above the water, for over a mile. It was thus an eerie forerunner of the modern Exocet surface-skiniming naval rockets. This woodcut is from The Fire-Drake Artillery Manual, published in 1412.