According to the Chinese alchemist Sun-Sy-Miao, blackpowder was invented sometime in the 7th Century AD. Actual use in firearms seems to have occurred in Europe in 1300 AD, and shooters have tried to improve blackpowder ever since.

Chief among the complaints about blackpowder is that it's highly explosive--being sensitive to heat, spark, static and impact. It also produces a considerable amount of white smoke that reveals a shooter's position, clouds battlefields and obscures targets. There's also the matter of heavy fouling that can make follow-up shots tough to load and guns a chore to clean, and if they're not cleaned properly, results in rust. And lest I forget, some folks are put off by the permeating effluvium.

The most well known blackpowder replacement is Pyrodex. This bulk-for-bulk replacement was introduced in 1976. It's less dense than blackpowder, so pound-for-pound you get more shots from a pound of Pyrodex than you do from a pound of blackpowder.

One early attempt at improving blackpowder was du Pont's 1857 patent that substitutes sodium nitrate in place of potassium nitrate. Blackpowder is a mechanical mixture of potassium nitrate, charcoal and sulfur, and sodium nitrate was less expensive and has a lower molecular weight. The resulting "soda powder" is a cheaper and more powerful powder, but unfortunately it's also highly hygroscopic (moisture attracting) and so it's unsuitable for firearms. Soda powder wasn't a waste of effort, however, as it's used in mining where rust isn't the issue it is with delicate firing mechanisms.

The combination of two IMR White Hots and 250-gr. Barnes Expander MZ bullets provided accuracy that rivals many centerfire bolt-action rifles.

Other, more successful improvements, centered on refining the three basic ingredients and how they're processed.

Because blackpowder is a mechanical mixture, the more intimate the mixture the better the powder. Progress in this area includes machine grinding of the ingredients, and mixing them wetted with distilled water. It was also found that blackpowder could be made less porous and better burning if it was heavily compressed to make the surface hard and impermeable.

Controlling grain size was another significant blackpowder improvement. Larger grain powder is more suitable for large-bore guns, while finer grain powder is best used in smaller bore guns.

During the Civil War, Confederates found that refining the potassium nitrate resulted in a higher quality powder. Sulfur lowers the ignition temperature of the blackpowder compound and improves its homogeneousness, so tweaks there are not unknown. Also, the type of wood used to make the charcoal makes a difference in powder quality, and temperature-controlled kilns produce the most consistent charcoal.