Even the folklore story about Tom Smith sitting in front of the fire and getting the idea for a "bang" in his crackers has to be in more than a little doubt. Whilst he may have got the idea to add a "bang" to his crackers, the following puts the traditional story in a different light.

Various accounts have been given of the invention of the cracker snap - some attributing it to Tom Smith himself. In fact snaps were first described in the first quater if the 19th century and were one of several exploding novelties or "detonating works" introduced following the discovery of silver fulminate by the English chemist Edward Charles Howard (1774 - 1816) in 1800 and the development in 1802 ( by Italian chemistry professor Luigi Valentino Brugnatelli (1761 - 1818) ) of a satisfactory method of preparing it. Snaps were evidently in use for amusement and for practical jokes long before Tom Smith introduced them as an essential component of Christmas crackers around 1860.

In his book "A History of Fireworks", Alan St Hill Brock (1886 - 1956 ) of Brocks Fireworks, referred to an old book "The Art of Making Fireworks by Plain and Easy Rules" by T. Angelo. Brock says this was published "c.1816", and he wrote of Angelo:-

"The sole addition he makes to the material published elsewhere is a description of what he calls "Waterloo Crackers" in which Fulminating Silver is employed. These are the 'snaps' used today in Christmas crackers to supply their 'bangs', although fifty years were to elapse before the late Tom Brown, - for many years an experimental chemist to my firm - hit upon the idea of their construction and sold it to the late Tom Smith".

* These details kindly supplied by chemist Barry Sturman from Australia, April 2008 in his research for the forthcoming Encyclopedia Dictionary of Pyrotechnics (to be published by the Journal of Pyrotechnics).