The Fire Piston and Its Origins in Europe

years. Understandably enough, they have been attracted above all by the intriguing possibility that the device was invented in that region quite independently of European influences and possibly long before the 1860's, when it appears to have been first observed there by European travelers. Consequently they have tended to regard the fire piston's appearance in Europe in the early years of the nineteenth century as the result either of a separate, though rather less interesting, process of invention in the West2 or, alternatively, of direct importation from those parts of Asia where the device was already commonly used.3 Although such accounts have been valuable, if only in preserving the fire piston from neglect, they have conveyed a view of the instrument's history which is not only incomplete (by virtue of their scant treatment of the European version of the instrument) but which is also supported by inadequate evidence on certain important points

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