The first blasting cap or detonator was demonstrated in 1745 when British physician and apothecary William Watson showed that the electric spark of a friction machine could ignite black powder, by way of igniting a flammable substance mixed in with the black powder. From p. 500: "But I can, at pleasure, fire gunpowder, and even discharge a musket, by the power of electricity, when the gunpowder has been ground with a little camphor, or with a few drops of some inflammable chemical oil."
