What are some other inventions in ancient China

The Kongming lantern, keeled waterwheel, geodesic, paper, iron plow and so on.

1, Kongming lantern

Kongming lanterns are also called sky lanterns, commonly known as wishing lanterns, also known as praying for the sky lantern. Is an ancient Chinese handicrafts, in ancient times more military purposes. Modern people put the Kongming lanterns mostly as a prayer for blessings. Men, women and children write down their wishes with their own hands to symbolize a good harvest and success, and happiness year after year. Generally in the Lantern Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival and other major festivals.

Legend has it that during the Five Dynasties (907-960 A.D.), a woman named Xin Qiniang, who fought with her husband in Fujian Province, used bamboo gimlets to make a square frame, glued with paper, and made it into a large lamp, with burning turpentine on the chassis, so that the lamps flew up into the sky on hot air and were used as military contact signals.

This turpentine lamp, in Sichuan called Kongming lantern. Legend has it that the shape of this lantern like Zhu Geliang wearing a hat, hence the name Kongming lantern.

Another theory is that it was invented by Zhuge Liang in the Three Kingdoms. Back then, Zhuge Liang was besieged in Pingyang, unable to send troops out of the city to ask for help. Kong Ming calculated the wind direction, made a floating paper lantern, tied on the message of help, and then really get out of danger, so later generations will call this lantern for Kong Ming lanterns.

2, keel waterwheel

Keel waterwheel is also known as the "overturned car", "treadmill", "waterwheel", the provincial name "keel ". Han history of irrigation farming tools, popular in most parts of China. This water lifting facility has a long history. Because its shape is like a dragon bone, so the name "dragon bone waterwheel".

The structure is a wooden board as a trough, the end is immersed in the water flow, there is a small wheel axle a. The other end has a small wheel axle, fixed. The other end has a small wheel shaft, fixed to the embankment on the wooden frame. When used to step on the crutch wood, so that the big wheel axis rotation, driven by the groove of the board leaves scraping the water upstream, pouring irrigation in the field of higher terrain.

After generations, there is the use of running water as the driving force of the water turning keel car, the use of oxen to make the gear rotation of the oxen pulling the cart. As well as the use of wind power to turn the wind turning cart. Guangdong and other places with hand-cranked lighter, applied to the field ditch, called "hand-cranked pulling car".

3, geodesic instrument

Geodesic instrument is a Chinese scientist Zhang Heng, East Han Dynasty created a masterpiece. Zhang Heng was in the Eastern Han Dynasty, earthquakes are more frequent. Zhang Heng has a lot of personal experience of earthquakes, in order to grasp the dynamics of the national earthquake, he after years of research, and finally in the first year of Yangjia (132 A.D.) invented the Waiting Wind Geodesic Instrument, which is also the world's first geodesic instrument.

The geodesic instrument has eight directions, each with a dragon head with a dragon pearl in its mouth, and a toad at the bottom of each dragon head to correspond with it. If an earthquake occurs in any direction, the dragon beads contained in the mouth of the dragon will fall into the mouth of the toad, and the direction of the earthquake can be measured.

On December 13, 134 A.D., in the third year of Emperor Shundei's Yangjia reign in the Han Dynasty, a dragon machine in the geodesic instrument was suddenly activated and spat out a copper ball, which fell into the mouth of the toad.

The people in the capital (Luoyang) at that time, however, did not feel any sign of an earthquake, so some people began to talk about it, blaming the geodesic instrument for not being effective.

In a few days, someone from Longxi (present-day Tianshui, Gansu Province) reported that an earthquake had indeed occurred there a few days before, and people began to be extremely convinced of Zhang Heng's superior technology. Longxi is more than 1,000 miles away from Luoyang, and the geodesic instrument is labeled correctly, indicating that its sensitivity in measuring earthquakes is relatively high.

But due to the long history of Zhang Heng geodesic instrument has been lost, leaving only a hundred words of written records.

4, paper

Paper, made of plant fibers, can be folded arbitrarily used to write the sheet. Paper is writing, printing carrier, can also be used as packaging, sanitation and other uses, such as printing paper, copy paper, toilet paper, facial tissue and so on. The invention of paper with irregularly crossed fibers originated in China.

The earliest paper was made 2200 years ago, at the beginning of the Western Han Dynasty, but it was still crude and not widely used. It was improved by Cai Lun of the Eastern Han Dynasty in 105 AD and is considered the originator of modern papermaking.

Writing was invented during the Yin and Shang periods of China, and oracle bones were used as writing materials. During the Spring and Autumn period, bamboo and wood slices, as well as thick silk and silk, were discovered and utilized as writing materials. But because thick silk was too expensive and bamboo was too bulky, paper was created.

One of the four great inventions of ancient China, papermaking, along with the compass, gunpowder and printing, provided the material and technological basis for the prosperity of ancient Chinese culture. The invention of paper put an end to the complicated history of ancient paperwork and greatly facilitated the spread and development of culture.

The Western Han Dynasty paper with maps unearthed at Fumatan in Tianshui, Gansu Province, is the earliest pulp paper found in the world.

5, iron plow

Iron plows first appeared in China during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods. Hebei Yixian Yan Xiadu site and Henan Hui County have been unearthed during the Warring States period of iron plowshare. The invention of the iron plowshare is a remarkable achievement, which marks a new period in the development of human society and a new stage in the struggle of mankind to transform nature.

The iron plow, a farming tool of the Han Dynasty, already had a plow wall, which could play the role of turning and breaking up the soil. When the iron plow was introduced to the Netherlands in the 17th century, it triggered an agricultural revolution in Europe.

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