The Four Great Inventions of Ancient China

The Four Great Inventions of Ancient China

Compass

The invention of the compass is the result of China ancient working people know to the object magnetism in the long term practice.

In the Northern Song Dynasty the mariner's compass was invented.

It was made by putting a magnetic needles on a wooden disk called luopan.

Gunpowder

The gunpowder is made of niter(硝石), sulfur and charcoal three kinds of materials mixing.

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 emery, this is the most primitive cannon. Papermaking

In the Eastern Han Dynasty, the papermaking skill inventor Cai lun is on the basis of that forefathers weave silks experience and make into the paper with bark, broken fishing network, rag, etc. From then on, paper become to the material that generally write.

Printing

In Song Dynasty, word worker Bi Sheng , use the clay with viscidity, make into the rectangle cube, carve the single Chinese characters on it,

burn it with the fire, from the font. The printing skill is named the typography.

The important influence of the four great inventions

C ompass make human’s civilization extended to marine from land, especially making a great contribution to the finding of new sea-land.

Gunpowder since the emergence of gunpowder weaponry and application, the development of China’s ancient weapons from the Cold War era into the use of firearms and cold weapons era.

Papermaking make a contribution to preservation and continuity of human’s culture.

Printing accelerate the development and communication of human’s culture.

Karl Marx also commented that, "Gunpowder, the compass, and the printing press were the three great inventions which ushered in bourgeois society. Gunpowder blew up the knightly class, the compass discovered the world market and founded the colonies, and the printing press was the instrument of Protestantism and the regeneration of science in general; the most powerful lever for creating the intellectual prerequisites." _Marx/Engels Collected Works (MECW)

The four great inventions and intellectual property

There are come disputation about whether the four great inventions belong to China. I will take some examples. Some people think that today the whole world use the yellow gunpowder but ancient Chinese people invented the black gunpowder, which is not the same with today’s gunpowder. In addition, the movable type printing was just recorded in a book, Mengxibitan. There is no material object leaving today. Even though Bishen really invented it, it hasn’t been commercialized.