Ancient_Chinese_Contributions

RUNNING HEAD: Ancient Chinese Contributions 1. RUNNING HEAD: Ancient Chinese Contributions 2. Although not many people know, perhaps more than half of the inventions and discoveries which the modern world relies on were originated from East Asia. The Ancient Chinese culture has contributed to our world civilization achievements in the fields of row planting, the compass, porcelain, toilet paper, deep drilling, iron plows, paper making, and gun powder. There are four inventions that are celebrated in Chinese culture for their historical significance and as signs of ancient China’s advanced science and technology. The four great inventions are: the compass, paper making, printing, and gunpowder. These four discoveries had an enormous impact on the development of Chinese civilization and a global impact. Paper-making- paper is one of the four great inventions of China. Before the invention of paper, characters were written on animal bones, turtle backs, or stones. Later, silk and more widely used bamboo slips and wooden tablets were used to record things. The earliest form of paper first appeared in the Western Han Dynasty (206BC-23AD), but the paper was generally very thick, coarse, and uneven in their texture, made from pounded and disintegrated hemp fibers. The paper unearthed in Han tomb in Ganso Province is by far the earliest existing ancient paper, tracing back to the early Western Han Dynasty. The art of paper-making spread east to Korea and Japan at the beginning of the seventh century (the end of the Sui Dynasty and the beginning of the Tang Dynasty). In the eight century, along with the Silk road, the Arab countries began to learn how to make paper. Printing- is another one of the four great inventions of Ancient China. It has a long 3. history and far-reaching impact. With a development process of over 5,000 years, printing is a key component of Chinese civilization. During the Sui Dynasty, printing is accomplished by mean of a knife cut laterally reversed characters on wooden boards, paint ink on it, and then print the characters on the paper. However, the wooden board can be used once, because the boards are specially made for the printing of the book. Therefore, to print a book was a very painstaking task at that time and to print a book of different content, another batch of boards should be made. The difficulty was solved in the 11th century. A lettering worker Bi Sheng spent 40 years making types of Chinese characters. He used lime cement as material, molded into square columns, carved a laterally reversed Chinese character on the bottom of one column, and then baked to harden in a furnace. These columns could be arranged according to the contents of the book to be printed, so the type could be reused unlimited times. Wang Zheng, a mechanist flourished in the Yuan Dynasty. He invented and developed the wooden type and typesetting method. A few years later, he invented the metal type which greatly improved the printing quality. Gunpowder- the invention of gunpowder had a close relationship with the advanced ancient workmanship of smelting industry. People began to know a lot of chemistry knowledge about the nature of different mineral materials during the process of smelting operations. With the knowledge, ancient necromancers tried to seek the elixir of immortality from certain kinds of ores and fuel. Although explosive mixture could be produce by combining sulfur, charcoal, and salt peter (potassium nitrate). This mixture finally led to the invention of gunpowder although its exact date of 4. invention still remains unknown. Many historical materials indicate that gunpowder first appeared before the Tang Dynasty (618-907). From 300 to 650AD, several recipes were written about inflammable mixtures. Some historians date the invention of gunpowder at 850AD when a Taoist book warned of three specific elixir formulas as too dangerous to experiment. The military applications of gunpowder began in the Tang Dynasty. Explosive bombs filled with gunpowder and fired from catapults were used in wars. During the song and Yuan Dynasties (1279-1368), the military applications of gunpowder became common and some other weapons such as; fire cannon, rocket, missile, and fireball were introduced. The Compass- early in the spring and autumn period (770-476BC), while mining ores and melting copper and iron, Chinese people chanced upon a natural magnetite that attracted iron and pointed fixedly north. In the warring states period (206BC-23AD), after constant improvement the round compass came into being. Referred to as a “south-pointer”, the spoon-or ladle-shaped compass is of magnetic lodestone, and the plate is of bronze. The circular center represents Heaven, and the square plate represents earth. The handle of the spoon points south. The spoon is a symbolic representation of the great bear. The plate bears Chinese characters which denote the eight main directions of north, north-east, east, etc. This type of compass has been scientifically tested and found to work tolerably well. By the time of the Tang Dynasty (960-1127), Chinese scholars had devised a way to magnetize iron needles, by rubbing them with magnetite, and then suspending them in water. They also observed that needles cooled from red heat and held in the north-south orientation (the earth’s axis) 5. would become magnetic. These more refined needle compasses could then be floated in water (wet compass), placed upon a pointed shaft (dry compass) or suspended from a silk thread, etc. The four inventions were regarded as the most important Chinese achievements in science and technology, simply because they had a prominent position in the exchanges between the East and West. The numerous inventions and discoveries greatly advanced China’s productive forces and social life. Many are at least as important as the four inventions, and some are even greater than the four. We all are grateful to them, because of their inventions humans stepped ahead and we are here as the modern era of science. RUNNING HEAD: Ancient Chinese Contributions 6. REFERENCE Computersmiths-History of Chinese Inventions, HTTP://www.computersmiths.com[->0] How stuff works.1998-2-12, HTTP://www.howstuffworks.com[->1] Inventions of Ancient China. 2007-2-1-, HTTP://www.cultural-china.com[->2] [->0] - HTTP://www.computersmiths.com/ [->1] - HTTP://www.howstuffworks.com/ [->2] - HTTP://www.cultural-china.com/