At the end of the 13th century, firearms were introduced to Europe from Arab countries. When the Europeans discovered that the destructive power produced by the explosion of gunpowder and immediately after burning exceeded any previous weapons, they immediately caught up with and surpassed China in gun technology that combined iron and explosives. By the mid-14th century, large-caliber guns were widely used in Europe. But early guns were not very powerful and inconvenient to use. According to the Theoretical Index of Weapon Lethality (TLI) provided by the American Ty. . The killing power of rifles using conical bullets and breech technology greatly exceeded that of cold weapons, thus determining the fate of cold weapons being eliminated.
The development of firearms is inseparable from the development of metallurgical technology, steam technology, mechanical technology, chemistry and physics at that time. The emergence of steam allowed steamships to cruise on the water. The development of ballistics has improved the range and hit rate of guns. Mechanical technology has greatly improved the structure of weapons, especially the invention of the internal combustion engine and jet engine , which has greatly promoted the development of vehicles, ships, and aircraft.
In the Russo-Japanese War in the early 20th century (1904-1905 AD), picric acid explosives were used for the first time. In World War I , TNT explosives were used again, and the original black explosives changed from the protagonist to a supporting role.
