When writing with a Western alphabet of more than nine letters, there is a temptation to go on with words like eleven. With Chinese characters, ten is ten-blank and eleven is ten-one zero was left as a blank space: is 'four blank five' , This was much easier than inventing a new character for each number imagine having to memorize an enormous number of characters just to read the date! Having a decimal system from the beginning was a big advantage in making mathematical advances.
The first evidence of decimals in Europe is in a Spanish manuscript of CE. China has always been plagued with earthquakes and the government wanted to know where the economy would be interrupted. A seismograph was developed by the brilliant scientist, mathematician, and inventor Chang Heng whose works also show he envisaged the earth as a sphere with nine continents and introduced the crisscrossing grid of latitude and longitude.
His invention was noted in court records of the later Han Dynasty in CE the fascinating description is too long to reproduce here. It can be found on pgs. Modern seismographs only began development in The first version of the match was invented in CE by impoverished court ladies during a military siege. Hard pressed for tinder during the siege, they could otherwise not start fires for cooking, heating, etc.
The matches consisted of little sticks of pinewood impregnated with sulfur. There is no evidence of matches in Europe before Most people believe blood circulation was discovered by William Harvey in , but there are other recorded notations dating back to the writings of an Arab of Damascus, al-Nafis died Papyrus, the inner bark of the papyrus plant, is not true paper.
Paper is a sheet of sediment which results from the settling of a layer of disintegrated fibers from a watery solution onto a flat mold.
Once the water is drained away, the deposited layer is removed and dried. The oldest surviving piece of paper in the world is made of hemp fibers, discovered in in a tomb near Xian, China, and dates from between the years and 87 BCE.
The oldest paper with writing on it, also from China, is dated to CE and contains about two dozen characters. Paper reached India in the seventh century and West Asia in the eighth. The Arabs sold paper to Europeans until manufacture in the West in the twelfth century. The tribal people of Central Asia discovered 'frozen-out wine' in their frigid climate in the third century CE.
In wine that had frozen was a remaining liquid pure alcohol. Freezing became a test for alcohol content. Distilled wine was known in China by the seventh century. The distillation of alcohol in the West was discovered in Italy in the twelfth century.
Two kitemakers, Kungshu P'an who made kites shaped like birds which could fly for up to three days, and Mo Ti who is said to have spent three years building a special kite were famous in Chinese traditional stories from as early as the fifth century BCE. Kites were used in wartime as early as when kites with messages were flown over Mongol lines by the Chinese. The strings were cut and the kites landed among the Chinese prisoners, inciting them to revolt and escape.
Kites fitted with hooks and bait were used for fishing, and kites were fitted with strings and whistles to make musical sounds while flying. The kite was first mentioned in Europe in a popular book of marvels and tricks in While one plate was being printed, another plate could be composed. After printing, the movable types were taken away and stored for future use. Movable type printing has a very important position in the history of printing, for all later printing methods such as wooden type, copper type and lead type printing invariably developed on the basis of movable clay types.
Bi Sheng created movable type printing more than four hundred years earlier than it was invented in Europe. According to ancient records, natural magnets were employed in China as direction-finding devices. This led to the first compass, called a sinan south-pointing ladle during the Warring States Period. In the Han Dynasty compasses consisted of a bronze on which 24 directions were carved and a rod made from a natural magnet. Such devices were in use until the eighth century.
In the Song Dynasty, Shen Kuo described the floating compass, suspended in water, a technique which minimized the effect of motion on the instrument. This enabled the compass to be used for sea navigation for the first time. The invention of the compass promoted maritime undertakings, and its use soon spread to the Arab world, and thence to Europe.
China's four great ancient inventions made tremendous contributions to the world's economy and the culture of mankind. They were also important symbols of China's role as a great world civilization. Four Great Inventions of China. Paper making China was the first country in the world to make proper paper. However, a recent archeological survey indicates that paper had already been invented years earlier and was used by the ancient Chinese military.
Later, he discovered that the quality of the paper could be improved by adding hemp and old fish nets to the pulp. Soon, paper became the new writing material, and it only took a few years before it was widely in use all over China. Later, paper was brought to the rest of the world via the Silk Road.
The invention of silk dates back to the fourth millennium BC during the Neolithic period. Apart from clothing , silk was widely used in a variety of sectors including writing, fishing, and for musical instruments. Silk was dominantly used by emperors and high-class society but later it spread to the rest of the population.
It was used as a reward for a worthy Chinese citizen or government official. Silk became an important part of the Chinese economy. Japan and the Middle East started cultivating silk around AD and the Crusades brought the concept of silk production to Western Europe. This resulted in an economic boom and Chinese silk started to decrease in value and exports.
However, China dominates the luxury silk market today. Shennong liked to drink hot water. One day during a march he and his army stopped to rest and his servant prepared some boiling water for him. A brown leaf fell into the water and the water turned brown. The servant presented it to the emperor, he drank it and found it refreshing.
During the Han dynasty, tea was used as a medicine, and it was used as a drink on social occasions from the Tang dynasty — AD. Tea was prepared differently in ancient China than it is today. Tea leaves were processed and compressed into cake form. The dried teacake known as brick tea was ground in a stone mortar. The powder from the teacake was then boiled in a kettle, or hot water was added to it. It was then served as a hot beverage. White tea compressed tea was produced during the Tang dynasty, and it was harvested in the early spring when the tea leaves were still silver needles.
The Chinese were ahead of the rest of the world in producing silk, and they used this silk to make kites, adding a resilient and lightweight bamboo framework to high tensile strength silk. By AD, paper kites were being used to carry messages for rescue missions. During the medieval period, the Chinese used kites to test the wind, measure distance, and for military communication. The Babylonians in ancient Mesopotamia invented single tube drills around BC, but these never reached Europe or Asia.
Chinese farmers generally planted seeds by hand which was time-consuming and ineffective. Most of the seeds never germinated because of pests and the elements. The ancient Chinese found an alternative to this problem. It was developed in the landlocked province of Szechuan, around 1, miles from the sea, in order to get salt from boreholes.
Deep drilling borehole technology slowly improved, and the ancient Chinese were finally able to extract natural gas from the boreholes. The gas was carried by a bamboo pipe to its destination and then used as fuel. By the 11th century, the Chinese were able to drill boreholes over 3, feet deep. The same technology was used to drill the first petroleum well in California in the s.
Porcelain was not a sudden invention, and an ancient form of porcelain existed during the Shang dynasty BC— BC.
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