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The Four Great Inventions are inventions from ancient China that are celebrated in Chinese culture for their historical significance and as symbols of ancient China's advanced science and technology. They are the compass , gunpowder , papermaking and printing .
This sub-section is about paper making; for the writing material first used in ancient Egypt, see papyrus.. Paper: Although it is recorded that the Han dynasty (202 BC – AD 220) court eunuch Cai Lun (50 AD – AD 121) invented the pulp papermaking process and established the use of new materials used in making paper, ancient padding and wrapping paper artifacts dating from the 2nd century BC ...
Earliest known written formula for gunpowder, from the Wujing Zongyao of 1044 AD.. Gunpowder is the first explosive to have been developed. Popularly listed as one of the "Four Great Inventions" of China, it was invented during the late Tang dynasty (9th century) while the earliest recorded chemical formula for gunpowder dates to the Song dynasty (11th century).
Another early record of gunpowder, a Chinese book from c. 850 AD, indicates: [20] Some have heated together sulfur, realgar and saltpeter with honey; smoke and flames result, so that their hands and faces have been burnt, and even the whole house where they were working burned down.
China: Private trade of gunpowder ingredients is banned in the Song dynasty. [20] 1075: Sinosphere: Vietnam's Lý dynasty used fire arrows and against the Song dynasty during the Lý–Song War (1075–1077). [21] 1076: China: Trade of gunpowder ingredients with the Liao and Western Xia dynasties is outlawed by the Song court. [14] 1083: China
Evidence of gunpowder's first use in China comes from the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period (618–907). [335] The earliest known recorded recipes for gunpowder are written by Zeng Gongliang, Ding Du, and Yang Weide in the Wujing Zongyao, a military manuscript compiled in 1044 during the Song dynasty (960–1279). [336] [337] [338]
The earliest gunpowder recipe and primitive weaponry date to China's Song dynasty and the oldest extant guns appear in the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty of China. However, historian Tonio Andrade notes that there is a surprising scarcity of reliable evidence of firearms in Iran or Central Asia prior to the late 14th century.
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. [citation needed] The outside world remained uninformed about Chinese work in agronomy, pharmacology, mathematics, and ...