Construct an academic classic of the discipline of Chinese mechanical history

2020 marks the 130th anniversary of Liu Xianzhou's (1890-1975) birth. In September of that year, the Beijing Publishing House republished the first part of Mr. Liu's History of Chinese Mechanical Engineering Inventions. Here, the author would like to revisit Mr. Liu's classic works with readers and commemorate his historical merits in creating the discipline of Chinese mechanical history.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the history of science and technology first became a new discipline in Europe and the United States. Chinese scholars also began to trace and study the traditions of Chinese science and technology during the New Culture Movement. In the study of Chinese mechanical history, Mr. Liu Xianzhou's pioneering contribution is particularly prominent.

Liu Xianzhou, History of Chinese Mechanical Engineering Inventions

01

Collect historical materials on mechanical engineering

Liu Xianzhou graduated from the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the University of Hong Kong in 1918 and has served as a professor or leader in Beiyang University, Northeastern University, Tsinghua University and Southwest Union University since 1924. He took the lead in using Chinese to write a variety of textbooks for mechanical engineering disciplines, and unified the Chinese terms of mechanical engineering. In addition to his teaching hours, he also looked up historical materials about mechanical technology from ancient texts.

In October 1935, Tsinghua University published Mr. Liu's pioneering work on mechanical history, "Historical Materials of Chinese Mechanical Engineering". According to the use (or industry) of machinery, the book is divided into 12 categories, such as general tools, vehicles, ships, agricultural machinery, irrigation machinery, textile machinery, military engineering, fuel, timers, engraving and printing, miscellaneous items, and western input mechanics, etc., and roughly outlines the general outline of ancient mechanical engineering. Although it is slightly far-fetched to include fuel, engraving and printing into "mechanical engineering", this book reflects Mr. Liu's grasp of the general pattern of mechanical engineering disciplines and their history, and points out the scope of knowledge, entry points and important historical materials for subsequent research.

02

Pioneering special research on the history of machinery

After 1935, while continuing to collect and sort out historical materials, Mr. Liu first carried out special research on ancient prime movers, transmission mechanisms, timers and other machinery and related inventors, and published a series of research papers. Among them: in 1940, he published "Wang Zheng and China's First Mechanical Engineering", identified Wang Zheng and Deng Yuhan (Jo hannes Terrentius) compiled "Far West Strange Instrument Illustrations", which was the first mechanical engineering work in China, identifying the technical knowledge depicted in this book; in 1943, he published "China's Position in the History of Thermal Engines", taking the lead in discussing mechanical power in Chinese history; in 1954, he published "China's Invention in Transmission Machinery", which systematically explained the ancient rope belt transmission. Chain drive, gear drive, cam drive and rod drive.

Mr. Liu's monograph is a classic of mechanical history that contemporaries and academic descendants cannot bypass. Wang Zhenduo restored a variety of ancient machinery for the Chinese Museum of History, which absorbed Mr. Liu's special research results. In 1956, Mr. Liu read the paper "The Invention of the Timepiece in Ancient China" at the 8th International Congress on the History of Science (Florence, Italy), and also had in-depth exchanges with Joseph Needham in person. Needham repeatedly quoted Mr. Liu's writings in his Mechanical Engineering Volume of the History of Science and Technology in China.

Only with a sufficient foundation for special topic research can we have the conditions to write academic monographs with systematic content. After more than 20 years of accumulation, Mr. Liu wrote his monograph on the history of machinery in the early 1960s.

03

Construct a discipline system for the history of Machinery in China

In 1961, Tsinghua University published the first part (first draft) of the History of China's Mechanical Engineering Inventions written by Mr. Liu. After consulting with his peers, he made partial revisions to the first draft, and the first part of the final draft of "History of Chinese Mechanical Engineering Inventions" was published by Science Press in May 1962. In contrast to the first draft, chapter 6 was added to the 1962 edition, and certain text and illustrations were added and deleted. In the preface to the book, he specifically thanked those who helped gather information, provide pictures, date artifacts, calculate and plot, and propose changes.

Taking the theory of mechanical engineering as the main line, Mr. Liu recounts the achievements of ancient mechanical engineering and constructs the disciplinary system of Chinese mechanical history. The 1962 edition of the History of Chinese Mechanical Engineering Inventions is divided into the following 6 chapters: Introduction; China's Invention in Simple Machinery; China's Invention in the Use of Elasticity, Inertia, Gravity and Friction Reduction, The Use of Friction and the Use of Continuous Rotation inStead of Intermittent Motion; China's Invention in Primeval Force; China's Invention in Transmission Machines or Transmission Parts; conclusion. In the "Concluding Remarks", the author discusses the factors that restricted the development of science and technology after the 14th century, such as "the industrial and agricultural production at that time was stagnant and stagnant, and there was no urgent need for new science and technology."

Mr. Liu also pioneered the study of sub-disciplines of the history of Chinese machinery, and first paid attention to the history of agricultural machinery, writing the History of the Invention of Agricultural Machinery in Ancient China (1963). This history of agricultural machinery comprehensively describes all kinds of agricultural machinery in ancient times.

Mr. Liu's work has laid a solid foundation for subsequent research. Mr. Lu Jingyan and Mr. Hua Jueming inherited and developed the disciplinary system proposed by Mr. Liu, and edited the mechanical volume of the History of Science and Technology in China (2000). Mr. Zhang Chunhui and You Zhanhong adhered to Mr. Liu's last wishes and wrote the second part of the History of Chinese Mechanical Engineering Inventions (2004).

04

Rigorously seek to decipher ancient inventions

Regarding the historical status of Chinese science and technology, Mr. Liu opposes the two tendencies of cultural inferiority and arrogance. In his "Introduction," he stressed: "We should sort out the inventions and creations of the working people of our country in successive generations on the basis of the existing scientific and technological knowledge, seeking truth from facts, and on the basis of sufficient evidence. To have is to have, and to have nothing is to have no. Early is early, late is late. It is mainly based on reliable records of the past few thousand years and the achievements in archaeological excavations in recent decades, especially in the decade after liberation, and is described very objectively. ”

In his "Introduction", Mr. Liu pointed out many difficulties in sorting out the history of invention, such as "the person who actually made the invention or the person himself will not record it in writing, or it will not be recorded because it is not valued by society." Some of the fortunate people are recorded by the literati of that time or later generations. They pay much attention to the conciseness of the text when recording, and at the same time do not really understand the content of these inventions, so that they are either too brief, or the records are untrue, or exaggerated, or the story is magical, or the details of the role of the appearance and surface are slightly more than the structure and transmission mechanisms of the internal records, so that future generations cannot fully understand them according to the records. "Reading Mr. Liu's treatise, it is not difficult for us to appreciate how he overcame various difficulties.

Academic originality is often imperfect, such as the small number of interpolation icons in the first part of the "History of Chinese Mechanical Engineering Inventions" with wrong literature sources. However, the flaws are not hidden. The first part of the "History of Chinese Mechanical Engineering Inventions" is known as "the first history of Chinese mechanical engineering", which is a landmark academic original achievement and a valuable legacy left by Mr. Liu to future generations.

The history of science and technology is not a discipline that "eats youth", and scholars of the history of science and technology must have good understanding and sufficient accumulation. Mr. Liu is hardly a full-time historian of science and technology and cannot devote most of his working time to the study of mechanical history. At the age of 45, he published "Historical Materials of Chinese Mechanical Engineering", and at the age of 71, he wrote a monograph on the history of Chinese mechanical engineering inventions. Contemporary scholars of the history of science and technology should inherit the academic heritage of their predecessors, work hard for a long time, and achieve outstanding performance.

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