The Brooklyn Bridge on Thursday, before the Fourth of July fireworks display slated to take over the night sky in Lower Manhattan and the Brooklyn waterfront. Elizabeth Wu / For China Daily

The biggest fireworks display in the United States is scheduled for Friday night in New York when more than 3 million people are expected to watch the annual Macy's Fourth of July celebration. And China, which invented the pyrotechnics thousands of years ago, will be responsible for some of the crowd's Oohs! and Ahhs!

The Glorious Fireworks Company in Hong Kong will provide some of the fireworks as well as other countries, including the US, Italy, Portugal, Brazil and Japan, according to Orlando Veras, director of Macy's national media relations.

The first fireworks were made from gunpowder, ingredients including saltpeter, sulphur and charcoal. Now chemicals are added for special effects.

The use of fireworks in the US increased to more than 207.5 million pounds in 2012 from 41 million pounds in 1980, according to the American Pyrotechnics Association, and 99 percent of those fireworks were made in China.

Between 1998 and 2009, annual fireworks industry revenues more than doubled, according to the association, with the total revenue in 2009 $945 million, up from $940 million in 2008.

The more than 3 million people that Macy's expects for this year's show will crowd into the east side of Manhattan and the Brooklyn waterfront for the first show to take place above the Brooklyn Bridge since 2009.New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio persuaded Macy's to bring the show back to the East River from the Hudson River on the west side.

Macy's show became an annual event in 1976, The weather forecast is for possible thunderstorms, but Veras said the fireworks can still be fired of "as they have on numerous occasions in the past" when it has rained.