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History of science and technology in China. China has been the source of many innovations, scientific discoveries and inventions. [1] This includes the Four Great Inventions: papermaking, the compass, gunpowder, and early printing (both woodblock and movable type).
Four Great Inventions. The intricate frontispiece of the Diamond Sutra from Tang dynasty China, 868 AD (British Library) The "Four Great Inventions" (simplified Chinese: 四大发明; traditional Chinese: 四大發明; pinyin: sì dà fāmíng) are the compass, gunpowder, papermaking and printing. Paper and printing were developed first.
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."
Original title. Science and Civilisation in China. Science and Civilisation in China (1954–present) is an ongoing series of books about the history of science and technology in China published by Cambridge University Press. It was initiated and edited by British historian Joseph Needham (1900–1995). Needham was a well-respected scientist ...
The history of China spans several millennia across a wide geographical area. Each region now considered part of the Chinese world has experienced periods of unity, fracture, prosperity, and strife. Chinese civilization first emerged in the Yellow River valley, which along with the Yangtze basin constitutes the geographic core of the Chinese ...
Until the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912), China was a world leader in technology and scientific discovery. Many Chinese inventions — paper and printing, gunpowder, porcelain, the magnetic compass, the sternpost rudder, and the lift lock for canals — made major contributions to economic growth in the Middle East and Europe.
Aside from many original inventions, the Chinese were also early original pioneers in the discovery of natural phenomena which can be found in the human body, the environment of the world, and the immediate Solar System. They also discovered many concepts in mathematics. The list below contains discoveries which found their origins in China.
China was a global scientific and technological leader up until the early years of the Ming dynasty.Ancient and medieval Chinese discoveries and Chinese innovations such as papermaking, printing, the compass, and gunpowder (the Four Great Inventions) contributed to the economic development of ancient and medieval East Asia, the Middle East and Europe.