Until the splitting of the atom in this century no single invention has had such a profound effect on history and society as the gun. It changed not only the pattern of warfare and destroyed the old concept of chivalry, but altered every aspect of life, law and the boundaries of empires. Man has always been attracted by the concept of striking from afar, but with the coming of gunpowder any man who possessed it became equal to the strongest in the land. From mysterious origins in China this astonishing substance changed itself from a source of wonder into real gun-powder with all that that implied and for the gun to emerge as a device sufficiently important to exercise even the mind of Leonardo da Vinci.