Professor Chris Bishop, presenter of the 2008 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, gives a family lecture on the history of the modern firework. Through demonstrations of pyrotechnic chemistry hear how Chinese incendiaries made from honey led to the development of gunpowder; discover how the loud bangs of fireworks are routed in the origins of photography; and find out how an accident in a nineteenth-century kitchen sparked a new chemistry for firework making. Recorded at the University of Cambridge on the 4 November 2011. The Ri is on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ri_science and Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/royalinstitution and Tumblr: http://ri-science.tumblr.com/ Our editorial policy: http://www.rigb.org/home/editorial-policy Subscribe for the latest science videos: http://bit.ly/RiNewsletter