pyrotechny

[Shakespeare] was master of the revels to mankind. Is it not as if one should have, through majestic powers of science, the comets given into his hand, or the planets and their moons, and should draw them from their orbits to glare with the municipal fireworks on a holiday night, and advertise in all towns, “very superior pyrotechny this evening!”

But if all rhetoric is a mode of pyrotechny, and all pyrotechnics are by necessity fugacious, yet even in these frail pomps there are many degrees of frailty.

Indeed all men well skilled in the Chymical Science, have a necessity of assenting to me in this, viz. that Pyrotechny is the Mother, and Nurse of various noble Sciences and Arts.

Gunpowder and the compositions of pyrotechny are the means used, in modern warfare, to propel projectiles, explode mines, destroy ships and buildings, and furnish light and signals for the operations of an army at night.