In the past, as long as the Chinese people mentioned Luban, often the first thing that came to mind was the carpenter's tool, as the carpenter's grandfather, Luban invented the ruler, invented the saw, and also invented the ink bucket, these tools are still in use today, which shows that behind its good use is irreplaceable.
As the most successful carpenter in Chinese history, Lu Ban mixed very well in the Spring and Autumn Period, and even the king of the Chu State personally took him into the palace, three days a small feast and a big feast for five days, and the reason was naturally not that the King of Chu wanted to learn carpentry, but because the King of Chu saw Lu Ban's other ability - military ability.
What military talents can a carpenter have? Lu Ban's military talent was naturally not to lead the troops to fight, but to manufacture siege equipment. In the history of ancient warfare, siege is a very uneconomical thing, in the original words of "Sun Tzu's Art of War": "The siege of the city must be lacking, ten sieges" Siege can not encircle the enemy to the point of collapse, so it will only make the other side fight to the death, and if you want to attack the city, you must have at least 10 times the enemy's soldiers and horses to win.
Even the great warrior Sun Tzu said so, it seems that the siege of the city is really laborious and unflattering, but for a big country like the State of Chu, the siege strategy is a must-do, so the King of Chu thought of Lu Ban, and he wanted Lu Ban to make a siege weapon for it, the kind that can do more with less. And Lu Ban obviously did not come to eat in vain, and he quickly showed the King of Chu his model of siege equipment, which was the first cloud ladder in human history.
In many film and television works, the image of the ladder is that a group of people carry a ladder and then lean against the city wall. But in fact, the ladder is not so simple, its core is a ladder, surrounded by wooden planks around the ladder, soldiers hidden inside, and horizontal logs on the outside, and then pushed forward by some sergeants. This is a complete ladder, and this ladder can not only attack the city, but also ensure that the soldiers will not be killed or injured before reaching the city. It can be seen how powerful the ladder is.
In fact, many people have ignored the power of the ladder, since Lu Ban invented the ladder, China's ancient wars can see the figure of this weapon. Especially during the time of Genghis Khan, the Mongols used ladders and return cannons to attack the cities of the Jin and Rus' principalities. It was also from that time that Europeans knew that sieges did not necessarily have to carry ladders forward, and that there were such good weapons.
And even today, the ladder still exists in our lives, the roof of the fire truck will have a ladder, when encountering a fire in a high place, this ladder will extend obliquely, and then extend forward section by section, this ladder is the fire ladder, it can not only send firefighters into the fire field at a high place, but also rescue people in the high fire field. The principle of this ladder comes from the cloud ladder designed by Lu Ban.
It can be seen that the Luban ladder has been used for thousands of years in human history, no shorter than the saw he invented, and in these thousands of years, the ladder has not departed from its origin, and the withdrawal from the war stage is because of the emergence of artillery.
At the end of the Middle Ages, artillery began to be used on a large scale in European wars, and the advent of this weapon made the city walls no longer have the advantage. And with the disappearance of the city wall, the ladder also came to an end. After all, the ladder is born from the city wall, and the city wall has no meaning of existence without the ladder.