I’m not a huge follower of fireworks so maybe this is a really self-evident question but has there been any significant technical improvement in the types of fireworks that can be set off? Have there been new colors or shapes that weren’t previously possible or any super whiz bang new developments? It seems to me that most of fireworks you see set off nowadays are still pretty much the same as the ones I remember seeing as a child.
There have been constant technological developments in professional grade fireworks from year to year. Computer controlled displays allow precision timing that can be coordinated with music. New shapes and colors do come along.
I got this from a show I heard today on public radio. Someone more knowledgeable on the details will flesh it out, I hope.
Well this year alone I saw fire works that spelled out U S A in red white and blue. they also had single shells with 4 sequential layers of different effects. Also saw a much brighter flash shell this year. Oh, and a new waterfall effect that is much longer in duration.
This is in addition to all the recent ones over the past years. I’ve seen heart shaped loops of light, Saturn like ringed spheres, little space ships that shoot out at a 45 degree angle from the ground and appear to move slowly… That one was especially cool because they shot them off to the theme of the cartoon “The Jetsons”. they trailed light until the song burst out and then they exploded.
New ones that i saw today were mushrooms, bicolor switchers (like green-purple hemispheres that switch color to purple-green), a red ball that “wipes” to white at a 45 degree angle, some balls that launch whistlers toward the ground like lightning bolts, etc. the hearts, smilie faces, cubes, sa turns were models introduced a few years back.
I used to be very interested in this area but it’s been a number of years since I paid close attention. Mentioned already are the control systems, rarely used 20 years ago but now more common. It’s still an expensive option found only in large displays. There are a number of new effects also mentioned. China is the center of fireworks development and has been for a very long time. A lot of new development occurs elsewhere, but the export of China’s best products have increased in line with that new development. Some better colors and and other display characteristics like brightness and time of burn have developed recently from new chemical mixtures supplanting old traditional formulations.
A lot of development, now at least 20 years old, was done for indoor ‘cold’ fireworks. The US led the way in this kind of development and at one point, maybe still, the US was a major exporter of this kind of firework to China.
The British Firework Championship is held in my city every year, and has been for a while now, and there’s a huge difference now to when it started. There’s always something new every year.
A really, really long time, since it was around 2000 years ago that they invented fireworks 
How could it get any better than when they sold real penny rockets by the gross?
I was surprised to learn that Israel purchases the most fireworks.
Are you sure of it? My understanding was that China gained a massive share of the fireworks market pretty recently (like since the 90s or so).
Changes in trade may have shifted the market that mainland China holds, but look at Pantastic’s post. China has been the center of ***fireworks development ***since always.
Australia seems to be the world’s major center for fireworks displays. Any sort of public event has to be prefaced with fireworks no matter how inappropriate. Every so often a major sporting event on a windless evening will start in a stadium clogged to invisibility by smoke from an earlier fireworks display. Since they are so chronically overdone and my children are grown I now actively ignore them all. Even new years eve.
Read up on the Zambellis of Pennsylvania. We’ve all seen their shows.
In doing so, you’ll be exposed to how some Italian immigrants of the late 1800’s, with some fireworks recipes in a small book, continually developed and innovated their fireworks, and even in the last 20-30 years, with computer technology and working with other manufacturers in other countries (including China) have added colors, precision, shapes, sounds and reliability.
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The Rozzi family in Cincinnati is pretty awesome for fireworks, they’ve been at it for almost 100 years. They do the huge WEBN 102.7 fireworks show every year over the Ohio River and their shows are amazing and innovative.
Some of their work utilizing the bridges over the city, etc:
Here’s a great video of the show from last year. It’s all set to rock music and is consistently so awesome that around 600,000 crowd the riverfront each year to party and watch them. This is cool!
