Firearms are a direct consequence of gunpowder, an invention attributed to the Chinese. Apparently the first historically recorded use of gunpowder was in 1231, during the Battle of Kuang Fen. The Chinese soldiers used gunpowder as a propellant for their flying arrows in a similar way as it is used today with flying canes. From then on, pyrotechnics became an art, which remains to this day. THE FIRST FIREARMS There are contradictions about the use of gunpowder in the West, since Roger Bacon (England) described its effects around 1250. The first historically verified records are from the year 1308, when the first cannons, known as Culverin and Falconet, appeared.