The Four Major Inventions

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A Glimpse of Chinese Traditional Culture

• The Four Major Inventions

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The Four Major Inventions

• Compass
• Papermaking
• Gunpowder
• Printing

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Compass

• The compass is a device showing geographic(???)
  direction by using the earths magnetic(??)
  field. It enabled trade and exploration in whole
  new ways.

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Compass

• Early in the Warring States period, while mining
  ores and melting copper and iron, Chinese people
  chanced upon a natural magnetite that attracted
  iron and pointed fixedly north.
• Referred to as a "South-pointer", the spoon or
  ladle (????) shaped compass is made of magnetic
  lodestone (????), and the plate is bronze. The
  circular center represents Heaven, and the square
  plate represents Earth.

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• A compass vehicle (???) was an ancient Chinese
  vehicle equipped with many gear wheels and a
  wooden figure that always pointed south no matter
  which direction the vehicle went. Its an earlier
  and more primitive form of the compass.

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• The Compass gives play to (??) important function
  in the navigation after introducing to Europe.

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Paper MakingPapermaking Skill

• Paper has been a major medium of recording,
  transmitting, and storing information in human
  civilization. The earliest characters were
  inscribed on bones, tortoise shells and bronze
  wares in the Shang Dynasty and later on silk,
  bamboo and wood.

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Do you know the process of paper-making?

• In the Eastern Han Dynasty (A.D.105), a court
  official named Cai Lun (??) used inexpensive
  materials such as bark, hemp (??), rags, fishnet,
  wheat stalks (??) and other materials to make
  paper, known as Cai lun Paper (???).
• The materials were soaked, cut into pieces,
  boiled with plant ash, washed, and grounded with
  a pestle in a mortar (???). The mixture was then
  poured evenly on a flat surface to dry, or baked
  to become paper. It was relatively cheap, light,
  thin, durable and more suitable for brush
  writing.

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Paper Making

• Bamboo Slips
• The bamboo slip has been used as a book form for
  the longest time in Chinese history. It was the
  main writing tool before the invention of
  papermaking and the popularization of paper.

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Gunpowder

• Gunpowder was invented in China, not by people
  seeking better weapons or even explosives, but by
  alchemists (????) seeking the elixir (?????) of
  immortality.

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Gunpowder

• Gunpowder is made of niter(??), sulfur and
  charcoal three kinds of materials mixing.

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Gunpowder

• In the Tang Dynasty, the gunpowder begins to be
  applied to the military affairs.
• People utilize the throwing stone machine, light
  the gunpowder bag and throw out, burn the enemy,
  this is the most primitive cannon.

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Gunpowder

• In the Yuan Dynasty, the method of making
  gunpowder was introduced to the Arab world and
  Europe, bringing a series of revolutions to
  weapon manufacturing, as well as to stratagem
  (??) and tactics (??) on the battlefield.

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PrintingTypographyta?p?gr?f? (?????)

• Printing, known as mother of civilization, was
  another great invention of the Chinese people.
• It has a long history and includes block printing
  (????) and movable type printing (????).

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• Block Printing was probably invented between the
  Sui and Tang dynasties. The process of block
  printing started with the cutting of wood into
  blocks, and then characters were engraved in
  relief (??) on the blocks. Ink was brushed on the
  engraved block and a white sheet of paper was
  spread across it and then brushed with a clean
  brush on its back leaving an image when the paper
  was removed.

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• The woodblock printing appear in Sui Dynasty. To
  carve protruding backward Chinese character(???)
  on woodblock with knife, then brush Chinese
  ink-liquid, and print on the paper.

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• The worlds oldest surviving book printed on
  paper is Vajra Sutra (???).
• It is the earliest woodcut illustration in a
  printed book.

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• In Song Dynasty, word worker Bi Sheng
  (A.D.1004-1048) used the clay with viscidity(??),
  made into the rectangle cube(???), carved the
  single Chinese characters on it, burned it with
  the fire, and formed the font(??). The printing
  skill is named the typography / movable type
  printing (????).

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Printing

• Movable Type Printing involved engraving single
  words into pieces of clay, firing them until
  hardened and using them as permanent type. The
  type was then set into printing plates.

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Other Impressive Ancient Inventions

• The ancient Chinese had brought many other fine
  inventions to mankind such as fireworks, the
  abacus (??) and silk.

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• Fireworks
• Fireworks were probably first made by stuffing
  gunpowder into bamboo sticks. It was commonly
  thought that explosions would scare off evil
  spirits and ghosts.

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• The abacus was an early form of a calculator. It
  is a frame with rows of beads(??) on metal
  rods(?) that are used for calculations.
• Usually, it can be separated into two sections
  two beads above, each representing 5 and five
  beads below, each representing 1, it was used for
  the four fundamental operations (????????) of
  arithmetic (??).

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• Silk A few centuries ago, European traders
  trekked along the Silk Road for Chinas exquisite
  (???) silk which only the Chinese knew how to
  make by rearing silkworms. It takes 40,000
  silkworms to make just five and a half kilograms
  of silk.
• Silk is cool to wear in hot weather and warm in
  cold weather.

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• Porcelain 'p?s?len is made from coal dust and
  the fine, white clay called kaolin 'ke??l?n
  (??). It is baked at 1200 degrees centigrade
  while ordinary ceramicss?'ræm?ks(?) are baked
  at 500 degrees centigrade. The first glazing
  color(??) was blue from the mineral cobalt (?).

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Discussion (5 minutes)

• How do you feel about the Four Major Inventions
  in ancient China?

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Homework

• Discussion topic for next class
• Tell the difference between Traditional
  Chinese Medicine and west medicine.