China has been the source of many innovations, scientific discoveries and inventions. This includes the Four Great Inventions: papermaking, the compass, gunpowder, and early printing (both woodblock and movable type). The list below contains these and other inventions in ancient and modern China attested by archaeological or historical evidence, including prehistoric inventions of Neolithic and early Bronze Age China. The historical region now known as China experienced a history involving Steel, hydraulics and mathematics applied to horology, metallurgy, astronomy, agriculture, engineering, music theory, craftsmanship, naval architecture and warfare. Use of the plow during the Neolithic period Longshan culture (c. 3000 – c. 2000 BC) allowed for high agricultural production yields and rise of Chinese civilization during the Shang dynasty (c. 1600 – c. 1050 BC). Later inventions such as the multiple-tube seed drill and the heavy moldboard iron plow enabled China to sustain a much larger population through improvements in agricultural output. By the Warring States period (403–221 BC), inhabitants of Ancient China had advanced metallurgic technology, including the blast furnace and cupola furnace, and the finery forge and puddling process were known by the Han dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD). A sophisticated economic system in imperial China gave birth to inventions such as paper money during the Song dynasty (960–1279). The invention of gunpowder in the mid 9th century during the Tang dynasty led to an array of inventions such as the fire lance, land mine, naval mine, hand cannon, exploding cannonball, multistage rocket and rocket bomb with aerodynamic wings and explosive payloads. Differential gears were utilized in the south-pointing chariot for terrestrial navigation by the 3rd century during the Three Kingdoms. With the navigational aid of the 11th century compass and ability to steer at sea with the 1st century sternpost rudder, premodern Chinese sailors sailed as far as East Africa. In water-powered clockworks, the Chinese had used the escapement mechanism since the 8th century, and the endless power-transmitting chain drive in the 11th century. They also made large mechanical puppet theaters driven by waterwheels and carriage wheels and wine-serving automatons driven by paddle wheel boats. For the purposes of this list, inventions are regarded as technological firsts developed in China, and as such it does not include foreign technologies which the Chinese acquired through contact, such as the windmill from the Middle East or the telescope from early modern Europe. It also does not include technologies developed elsewhere and later invented separately by the Chinese, such as the odometer, water wheel, and chain pump. Scientific, mathematical or natural discoveries made by the Chinese, changes in minor concepts of design or style and artistic innovations do not appear on the list.
Four Great Inventions
The following is a list of the Four Great Inventions—as designated by Joseph Needham (1900–1995), a British scientist, historian and sinologist known for his research on the history of Chinese science and technology.
Paper
Paper: Although it is recorded that the Han dynasty (202 BC – AD 220) court eunuch Cai Lun (50–121 AD) invented the pulp papermaking process and established the use of new materials used in making paper, ancient padding and wrapping paper artifacts dating from the 2nd century BC have been found in China, the oldest example of pulp papermaking being a map from Fangmatan, Tianshui; by the 3rd century, paper as a writing medium was in widespread use, replacing traditional but more expensive writing mediums such as strips of bamboo rolled into threaded scrolls, strips of silk, wet clay tablets hardened later in a furnace, and wooden tablets. The earliest known piece of paper with writing on it was discovered in the ruins of a Chinese watchtower at Tsakhortei, Alxa League, where Han dynasty troops had deserted their position in AD 110, after a Xiongnu attack. In the papermaking process established by Cai in 105, a boiled mixture of mulberry tree bark, hemp, old linens and fish nets created a pulp that was pounded into paste and stirred with water; a wooden frame sieve with a mat of sewn reeds was then dunked into the mixture, which was then shaken and then dried into sheets of paper that were bleached by exposure to sunlight; K. S. Tom says this process was gradually improved through leaching, polishing and glazing to produce a smooth, strong paper.
Printing
Woodblock printing: The earliest specimen of woodblock printing is a single-sheet dharani sutra in Sanskrit that was printed on hemp paper between 650 and 670 AD; it was unearthed in 1974 from a Tang tomb near Xi'an. A Korean miniature dharani Buddhist sutra discovered in 1966, bearing extinct Chinese writing characters used only during the reign of China's only self-ruling empress, Wu Zetian (r. 690–705), is dated no earlier than 704 and preserved in a Silla Korean temple stupa built in 751. The first printed periodical, the Kaiyuan Za Bao was made available in 713. However, the earliest known book printed at regular size is the Diamond Sutra, made during the Tang dynasty (618–907), a 5.18 m (17.0 ft) long scroll which bears the date 868. Needham and Tsien Tsuen-hsuin write that the cutting and printing techniques used for the delicate calligraphy of the Diamond Sutra book are much more advanced and refined than the miniature dharani sutra printed earlier.
Movable type: The polymath scientist and official Shen Kuo (1031–1095 AD) of the Song dynasty (960–1279) was the first to describe the process of movable type printing in his Dream Pool Essays of 1088. He attributed the innovation of reusable fired clay characters to a little-known artisan named Bi Sheng (990–1051). Bi had experimented with wooden type characters, but their use was not perfected until 1297 to 1298 with the model of the official Wang Zhen (fl. 1290–1333), who also arranged written characters by rhyme scheme on the surface of round table compartments. It was not until 1490 with the printed works of Hua Sui (1439–1513) that the Chinese perfected metal movable type characters, namely bronze. The scholar Xu Zhiding of Tai'an, Shandong developed vitreous enamel movable type printing in 1718.
Gunpowder
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