Four Great Inventions

These four inventions had a profound impact on the development of civilization throughout the world. However, some modern Chinese scholars have opined that other Chinese inventions were perhaps more sophisticated and had a greater impact on Chinese civilization – the Four Great Inventions serve merely to highlight the technological interaction between East and West.

Evolution

The appreciation of "The Three Great Inventions" was first proposed by the British philosopher Francis Bacon, and later taken up by Walter Henry Medhurst and other scholars.

Printing, gunpowder, and the common compass were brought to Europe by Arab traders during the Renaissance and Reformation. Bacon, a leading philosopher, politician, and adviser to King James I of England, wrote:

It is well to observe the force and virtue and consequence of discoveries. These are to be seen nowhere more clearly than those three which were unknown to the ancients [the Greeks], and of which the origin, though recent, is obscure and inglorious; namely printing, gunpowder, and the magnet. For these three have changed the whole face and stage of things throughout the world, the first in literature, the second in warfare, the third in navigation; whence have followed innumerable changes; insomuch that no empire, no sect, no star, seems to have exerted greater power and influence in human affairs than these three mechanical discoveries.

Karl Marx wrote:

Gunpowder, compass, and printing—these are the three major inventions that foretell the arrival of bourgeois society. Gunpowder blasted the knight class to pieces, the compass opened the world market and established colonies, and printing became almost unavoidable. In general, it has become a means of scientific renaissance, and has become the most powerful lever to create the necessary preconditions for spiritual development.

British Sinologist Medhurst pointed out:

The Chinese people's genius for inventions has manifested in many aspects very early. The three Chinese inventions (navigation compass, printing, gunpowder) have provided an extraordinary impetus to the development of European civilization.

Papermaking

Papermaking has traditionally been traced to China about AD 105, when Cai Lun, an official attached to the imperial court during the Han dynasty (202 BC – AD 220), created a sheet of paper using mulberry and other bast fibres along with fishing net, old rags, and hemp waste.

While paper used for wrapping and padding was used in China since the 2nd century BC, paper used as a writing medium only became widespread by the 3rd century. However, a recent archaeological discovery has been reported from Gansu of paper with Chinese characters on it dating to 8 BC. Before paper was invented, the ancient Chinese carved characters on pottery, animal bones and stones, cast them on bronzes, or wrote them on bamboo or wooden strips and silk fabric. These materials, however, were either too heavy or too expensive for widespread use. The invention and use of paper brought about a revolution in writing materials.

By the 6th century in China, sheets of paper were beginning to be used for toilet paper as well. During the Tang dynasty (618–907) paper was folded and sewn into square bags to preserve the flavor of tea. The Song dynasty (960–1279) that followed was the first government to issue paper currency.

Compass

A compass is a direction-indicating tool which is widely used in navigation and land exploration. From ancient times, its use facilitated travel and had a profound influence on trade, war, cultural exchange.

Before the discovery of the compass, travellers on open ocean or in unfamiliar terrain attempted to tell directions by interpreting the positions of the sun, moon, and pole stars. This was impossible during overcast weather, making travel difficult.

The compass's origins may be traced back to the Warring States period (476–221 BC), which used a lodestone compass called the "south-governor" (sīnán 司南). The earliest reference to a magnetic navigation device is from a Song dynasty book of 1040–1044, describing an iron "south-pointing fish" floating in a bowl of water. The device is recommended as a means of orientation "in the obscurity of the night." The first suspended magnetic needle compass was mentioned by Shen Kuo in 1088.

By the early Song dynasty, steady development resulted in a spherical compass with a small needle of magnetic steel which aligns itself to point south. During the Northern Song dynasty (960–1127), the compass was brought to the Arab world and Europe.

According to Needham, the Chinese in the Song dynasty and following Yuan dynasty made use of a dry compass. Instead of a floating needle, it used a suspended wooden frame in the shape of a turtle, containing a lodestone sealed in wax: when rotated, the tail would rotate to point north. The 14th-century European compass-card, with box frame and dry pivot needle, was in the 16th century adopted in China via Japanese pirates; nevertheless, use of the Chinese suspended dry compass persisted well into the 18th century.

Gunpowder

Originally, gunpowder was used to make fireworks for festivals and major events. It was later utilized as an explosive substance in cannons, fire-arrows, and other military weapons. During the Song and Yuan dynasties (960–1368), gunpowder was in high demand due to numerous battles and the development of mass industry.

Gunpowder was invented in the 9th century by Chinese alchemists searching for an elixir of immortality. By the time the Song dynasty treatise, Wujing Zongyao (武经总要), was written by Zeng Gongliang and Yang Weide in 1044, the various Chinese formulas for gunpowder held levels of nitrate in the range of 27% to 50%. By the end of the 12th century, Chinese formulas of gunpowder had a level of nitrate capable of bursting through cast iron metal containers, in the form of the earliest hollow, gunpowder-filled grenade bombs.

In 1280, the bomb store of the large gunpowder arsenal at Weiyang accidentally caught fire, which produced such a large explosion that a team of inspectors at the site a week later deduced that 100 guards had been killed instantly, with wooden beams and pillars blown sky high and landing at a distance of over 10 li (~2 mi or ~3 km) away from the explosion.

By the time of Jiao Yu and his Huolongjing (which describes military applications of gunpowder in great detail) in the mid-14th century, the explosive potential of gunpowder was perfected, as the level of nitrate in gunpowder formulas had risen to a range of 12% to 91%, with at least six different formulas in use that are considered to have maximum explosive potential for gunpowder. By that time, the Chinese had invented how to create explosive round shot by packing their hollow shells with this nitrate-enhanced gunpowder. An excavated trove of early Ming land mines showed that corned gunpowder was present in China by 1370. There is evidence suggesting that corned powder may have been used in East Asia as early as the thirteenth century.

Printing

During the Tang dynasty, printing was created in China (AD 618–906). The first mention of printing is in an AD 593 imperial decree by the Sui Emperor Wen-ti, who mandates the printing of Buddhist pictures and scriptures.

Woodblock printing

Woodblock printing, a predecessor of all printing technology is one of the Four Great Inventions. It remained a typical mode of printing in China for over a thousand years.

Blocks made from wood were used in the oldest type of Chinese printing. Printing textiles and reproducing Buddhist scriptures were also done using these blocks. Short religious writings were carried as charms in this manner.

The Chinese invention of woodblock printing, at some point before the first dated book in 868 (the Diamond Sutra), produced the world's first print culture. According to A. Hyatt Mayor, curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, "it was the Chinese who really invented the means of communication that was to dominate until our age." Woodblock printing was better suited to Chinese characters than movable type, which the Chinese also invented, but which did not replace woodblock printing. Western printing presses, although introduced in the 16th century, were not widely used in China until the 19th century. China, along with Korea, was one of the last countries to adopt them.

Woodblock printing for textiles, on the other hand, preceded text printing by centuries in all cultures, and is first found in China at around 220. It reached Europe by the 14th century or before, via the Islamic world, and by around 1400 was being used on paper for old master prints and playing cards.

Moveable type printing

Printing in Northern China was further advanced by the 11th century, as it was written by the Song dynasty scientist and statesman Shen Kuo (1031–1095) that the common artisan Bi Sheng (990–1051) invented ceramic movable type printing. Then there were those such as Wang Zhen (fl. 1290–1333) who invented respectively wooden type setting, which later influenced developing metal moveable type printing in Korea (1372–1377). Movable type printing was a tedious process if one were to assemble thousands of individual characters for the printing of simply one or a few books, but if used for printing thousands of books, the process was efficient and rapid enough to be successful and highly employed. Indeed, there were many cities in China where movable type printing, in wooden and metal form, was adopted by the enterprises of wealthy local families or large private industries. The Qing dynasty court sponsored enormous printing projects using woodblock movable type printing during the 18th century. Although superseded by western printing techniques, woodblock movable type printing remains in use in isolated communities in China.