Are fireworks getting better?
You bet. Digital simulations, electronic fuses, smokeless compressed-air propellant and even rockets carrying computer chips have all fizzed over the horizon in recent years, although the chances are that your local display this weekend will rely on more conventional methods. “The biggest difference is in the machines used to fire the displays,” says John Bush of British company Millennium Fireworks. Large displays are planned using computer simulations, which allow the bangs and whistles to be tightly coordinated with music and lights, if required. And forget the well wrapped-up men shuffling around with lit tapers – the firing of the fireworks in big displays is done digitally too, often using signals sent from a computer. When it comes to the fireworks themselves, not much has changed in years. They still work on the idea that different metals give off different wavelengths of light when they burn to produce colours, and most use the same delay fuses to place the bangs in the right
