Who invented the water lifting apparatus in the Spring and Autumn period?

The orange pulley, invented during the Spring and Autumn Period, was the earliest water-carrying apparatus in China.

The book Zhuangzi records a fable: When Confucius' student Zigong returned to Jin after traveling in Chu, he saw a farmer struggling to draw water from a well with a tile jar, and then carrying it to water his land, "exerting much effort but seeing little success", so he advised him to use orange water pulley instead to lift water for irrigation. He advised him to switch to using the orange water pulley to irrigate his field. The farmer did so, and the harvest was so big that he could "soak a hundred beds in a day". This fable shows that by the late Spring and Autumn period, orange water pulleys had already been used in production practice.

The orange water pulley is an instrument made of the principle of leverage, and its structure, though simple, is very ingenious. It is made of two long straight logs, one standing vertically by a well or a river, and the other placed horizontally on top of the vertical logs and knotted with a rope. The front end of the log is hung with a bucket or bottle to draw water, and the back end is dropped with a heavy object such as a stone. When irrigating, use your hand to lift up the back end of the log with heavy objects, and the front end will fall into the water with the water-drawing equipment; when filled with water, then pull down the back end of the log with heavy objects, and then the water-filled water-drawing equipment will rise out of the water with the front end. The use of orange water pulley to lift water is fast and labor-saving, greatly improving the efficiency. Later, the structure of the water pulley was improved. From the Han Dynasty stone carvings of water pulleys, the vertical straight wood has been changed to a wooden frame, the operation is more convenient.

Some time later, the use of axles made of water tools - windlass and pulley, also appeared one after another. Windlass and pulley is simple and practical, more advanced than water pulley and labor-saving, they have been used in our country for more than 2000 years, until today, China's rural areas are still some places continue to use.