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.
