The Four Major Inventions of China

Compass

The compass (指南针Zhi nan zhen in Chinese), is a needle pointing south (South is the primary direction in China, just as north in the West). As a device used to indicate geographic direction, the compass usually consists of a magnetic needle and a dial. The needle is often mounted on or suspended from a low-friction point which is free to pivot until aligned with the magnetic field of Earth. In Chinese classics, another device for indicating direction was mentioned, which is called Zhi nan Che (vehicle pointing south). Legend has it that it was invented by Huangdi (the Yellow Emperor), the earliest ruler of the Chinese nation. According to a more reliable record, the scientist Ma Jun of the Three Kingdoms period restored an early version of the invention. But it gave little details of the device. Researchers believe the vehicle was equipped with complicated gears and clutches, making it possible that the hand of the wooden figure on the vehicle pointed south wherever the vehicle moved.

The earliest primitive magnetic compass in China, Nan, was probably invented during the Warring States period, and in several Chinese classics of that period, the use of si nan was recorded. The device consisted of a spoon cut out of lodestone and a bronze plate. The surfaces of both the spoon and the plate are smooth enough for the spoon to turn easily on the plate. There are 24 directions marked on the plate. To use the device, people need to put the spoon in the center of the plate and turned it slightly. Due to magnetism, the spoon would move around, 

However, lodestone was not easy to obtain, and the spoon and plate were too heavy to carry around. Therefore, inventors later artificially magnetized iron needles or iron pieces in various shapes and developed the magnetic compass that is now usually seen.

Shen Kuo (1031-1095), a scientist of the Northern Song Dynasty, wrote in his Dream Pool Essays that geomancers pursued their art by rubbing a lodestone against a steel needle, thus causing the needle to point south. Such a needle, he adds, can then be floated on the water, put on the edge of nail or bowl, or, best of all, suspended from a thread. He notes further that the needle never points exactly to true south, but always deviates slightly. The knowledge here showed the principle of magnetic deviation. This fact proves that compasses had long been known and studied by the Chinese, even before Shen Kuo's time.

China is the first country in human history to use compasses in navigation. After the compass spread to the West, it had a tremendous impact on western civilization. In the early 12th century, the Northern Song government sent a large fleet to Korea. A book that recorded this voyage says that the fleet "observed the Dipper to determine the direction, and when it was overcast, the compass was used." The use of the compass ended human’s dependence on astronomical observation in navigation. In Europe, the compass was first mentioned in a French poem of 1190, but its application to navigation was mentioned only later.

Paper

Paper has been an important medium for recording, transmitting and storing information since ancient times in human civilization, especially for the works of thinkers, writers, statesmen, scientists, and historians. A major part of modern civilization is kept on paper: books, newspapers, letters, accounts, and archives.

In China, ancient characters were first carved on tortoise shells and animal bones and cast on bronze wares. Then in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, bamboo and wood slips and silk were used as writing materials.

But bamboo slips and silk had defects.

The bamboo slips were clumsy to handle, and a book would take a large number of slips. For instance, Hui Shi (390-317 BC), a noted scholar of the Warring States period, used to take five carts loaded with books on bamboo slips with him. In another case, it took two persons to carry a memorial on bamboo slips submitted by ministers to Emperor Wudi (140-87 BC) of the Han Dynasty. The Emperor took two full months to read it. The other material, silk, was too expensive for ordinary people to use for writing. Lighter and cheaper material was needed to replace them.

The paper was invented in the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-25 AD). A piece of material unearthed at Baqiao in the suburbs of Xi'an in 1957 was proved to be paper made of hemp and ramie fibers, and in 1986 a map unearthed in Tianshui of Gansu Province was also proved to be drawn on a piece of paper made of fibers from silk and hemp. But the earliest paper was rough and not quite suitable for writing, and the materials were not easy to obtain.

Cai Lun (?-121A.D.), a eunuch of the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220A.D.), made a revolutionary innovation in the techniques of making paper. He used the bark, hemp fiber, broken fishnets and rags as raw materials. The materials were soaked, cut into pieces, boiled with plant and grounded with a pestle in a mortar. The content of the mortar was then poured evenly on a flat surface to dry. Then the dried content was taken off and baked. After that, it would become paper. The process was later improved, and a mold of bamboo strips was used to dredge paper from a suspension of various materials. New materials were also added to the original formula. The new materials include bamboo, reed, rattan, straw, and various barks. With better materials and processes, some very fine varieties of paper were made in later dynasties.

In quite a number of places in southern China, such as Dengcun in the suburbs of Sihui City in Guangdong Province, a place teeming with bamboo, local people still make paper from bamboo exactly according to Cai Lun's process. The high-quality bamboo paper they made sells well in Southeast Asian countries. Now a visit to Dengcun will bring people back into history to see how Cai Lun makes paper.

China's papermaking techniques were first introduced to Korea and Vietnam, then to Japan in the 7th century, to Arab countries in the 8th century, to Europe in the mid-12th century, and four hundred years later to South America. During the two thousand years between the 2nd century BC and the 18th century, China had led the world in papermaking, making immeasurable contributions to the dissemination and recording of knowledge and accumulation and exchanges of culture.

Printing

The trinity of paper, printing, and books has contributed a lot to the growth of human knowledge, dissemination of scientific and cultural knowledge, and promotion of friendship between peoples. Printing has a long history. There are mainly two types of printing techniques: block printing and movable type printing. Block printing was probably invented between the Sui (581-618) and Tang dynasties, based on the technique of transferring texts and pictures cut in relief on seals and stone pillars to other surfaces that were developed in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods. The invention of paper and the improvement of ink led to the advance of block printing.

In block printing, the text was first written with ink on a piece of fine paper. Afterward, the written side of the sheet was applied to the smooth surface of a block of wood, coated with a paste that retained the ink of the text. Third, an engraver would cut away the blank areas so that the text stood out in relief and in reverse. In making a print, the woodblock was inked with a paintbrush, and a piece of paper was spread on it, and the back of the sheet was rubbed with a brush.

The earliest extant work done with block printing in China is the Jin Gang Jing (Diamond Sutra) printed in 868 during the Tang Dynasty. In the Five Dynasties (907-960) period, government-run cultural institutions engraved and printed ancient classics on a large scale, and non-governmental publishing was also quite popular. In the Song Dynasty, the Buddhist work Da Zang Jing (Tripitaka) was printed, and a total of 130,000 woodblocks was engraved for the project. The technique of block printing first spread to Japan and Korea, then to Egypt in the 12th century, and to Europe in the 14th century. In Japan, the Daranikyo Sutra printed in 770 is the oldest extant work done in block printing? As block printing was so complicated and difficult, it would take several years to print a book and the engraved blocks had to be stored in a big house.

Movable type printing was then invented. Bi Sheng (?—1051 A.D.), a worker in a printing shop in the Song Dynasty, devoted great efforts to making paper. He eventually invented movable type printing. The principle of Bi's invention is the same as that of typeset printing widely used in the 20th century.

In his Mengxi Bitan (Dream Pool Essays), Shen Kuo writes about Bi's movable type printing: Sometime between 1041 and 1048 A.D., commoner Bi Sheng conceived of movable type made of a mixture of clay and glue hardened by baking. He composed texts by placing the side of the type by side on an iron plate coated with a mixture of resin, wax, and paper ash. Gently heat this plate and press the types with a smooth plate to ensure that they are on the same level, and then cool the plate, and the type was solidified and became a piece of print. Once the impression was made, the type could be detached by reheating the plate. Bi prepared two iron plates to be used in turn to speed up the printing process. He also prepared different numbers of different types of characters according to their frequency of use in texts and arranged them in an orderly way to facilitate composting. Shen noted that this technique was the most efficient when people need to print several hundred or several thousand copies.

After Bi Sheng, other people invented types cut out of wood. In about 1313, Wang Zhen, an agronomist of the Yuan Dynasty printed his work Nong Shu (Treatise on Agriculture) with movable wood types and wrote about his innovation in an appendix to the treatise. He also invented horizontal compartmented cases that revolved about a vertical axis to permit easier handling of the type. Wang tested his technique and printed in a month one hundred copies of the 60,000-character Jingde Xian Zhi (Jingde County Annals), which was quite a remarkable achievement at that time.

Movable wood type printing was quite popular in China after Wang Zhen improved it, especially in the Ming and Qing dynasties. In 1773, the Qing government under Emperor Qianlong printed Wuyingdian Juzhenban Congshu (Wuying Palace Series of Treasured Books), with 138 titles in more than 2,300 volumes. It was the largest project of movable wood type printing in Chinese history. It took more than 250,000 types in different sizes cut out of jujube wood. After wood types, other researchers invented types made of metals: copper type in 1488 in the Ming Dynasty, and lead type in the early 16th century.

The technique of movable type printing was introduced to Japan and Korea in the 14th century. In the West, German printer Johannes Gutenberg is credited with the invention of typographic printing in the mid-century.