Today, it is common to drink hot water anytime, anywhere, but this was not the case in China before the 1970s. At that time, many families in rural China did not have hot water bottles, thermos cup was a luxury, and the water heater did not appear until twenty years later. Therefore, there was always such a plot in the old movies at that time: after the guests entered the door, the host immediately had to boil water to make tea, because there was no warm pot at home, and the boiling water could only be boiled. In earlier times, it was almost impossible to drink hot water at any time when going out or on the road, so when the dignitaries traveled, there were always servants carrying a stove with hot water on it for the old man to drink at any time. It is the emergence of thermos bottles that makes people realize the dream of drinking hot water freely. So when did the thermos come about, and who invented it?
Today, the earliest known thermos bottle is found in the ruins of Pompeii in ancient Rome, this thermos has adopted the principle of double insulation, indicating that the ancient Romans have understood the physical knowledge of vacuum energy to block temperature conduction, so in the West, the original thermos bottle has appeared at least two thousand years ago.
And who invented the modern thermos, the British and germans have their own opinions. The British believe that the thermos was invented by british scientist James Dewar in 1893. At that time, in order to preserve the low temperature liquid oxygen of minus 240 degrees Celsius, Dewar specially designed a bottle that can isolate heat conduction, this bottle is made of two layers of glass, and the two layers are pumped into a vacuum, blocking the conduction and convection of heat; then the inner wall of the bottle is plated with mercury, reflecting the radiation of heat back into the bottle, and the bottle mouth is sealed with a cork stopper, which is called a Dua bottle.
James Dewar
German glassmaker Reinhold Berger was keenly aware of the important role of Dewar bottles in daily life, so he patented the design of the thermos bottles in 1903 and mass-produced thermos bottles to put them on the market. To name his thermos, he also held a naming contest, and in the end, he chose a Greek word for "thermos."
Reinhold Berg
So the modern thermos was first invented by the British, and the Germans held the patent and succeeded in the market.
So when did Thermos in China appear? There is no exact record in the historical data, and there are no cultural relics unearthed to support it, but it is mentioned in some wild history notes, and there are views that the thermos bottles have appeared in the Song Dynasty. In the Song Dynasty scholar Hong Mai's "Yi Jian Zhi Vol. 15 Yiyang Ancient Bottle", it is recorded that such an event: "Zhang Yuqing, the grandson of Wending Gong Qi Xian, lived in Xiaoshui Town, Yiyang County, Jingxi. The ancient bottle is in the soil, the color is very dark, quite loved, and the study room raises flowers. Fang Dong is extremely cold, and forgets to remove the water overnight to prevent frost cracking. Tomorrow, everything else that has water is frozen, but this bottle alone is not. Different, try the soup, all day long is not cold. Zhang or guests out of the suburbs, put bottles in the basket, pour water and tea, all like the new boiling, since the beginning of the secret. After the pity, the drunken servant touched it. Look at it, and often pottery, etc., but the bottom of the clamp is several two inches thick, there are ghosts holding fire like fire, the portrayal is very exquisite, no one can recognize what it is. ”
The meaning of this passage is that there is a person named Zhang Yuqing, a descendant of Zhang Qixian, the military secretary of the Song Zhenzong Dynasty, who lives in Xiaoshui Town, Yiyang County, Chang'an. Once he got an ancient black vase in the soil, and he liked it very much, so he put it in the study to raise flowers. It was the middle of winter, and any container with water would freeze to ice. One night he forgot to pour the water from the bottle, and he thought the bottle was going to be frozen, but the next day he saw that the water in the other containers was frozen, except that the water in the bottle was not frozen. Zhang Yuqing felt very strange, so he poured boiling water into the bottle, and the result was that it did not get cold all day.
Zhang Yuqing once went out on an outing with a friend, took this bottle, filled it with boiling water, and when making tea, the water poured out as if it had just been boiled, so that I knew that this bottle could be kept warm. Unfortunately, the servant got drunk and broke the bottle. Zhang Yuqing found that the bottle was no different from ordinary pottery elsewhere, but there was a sandwich layer almost two inches thick at the bottom, which depicted a small ghost holding a torch burning, and no one could know what age the artifact was at that time.
Judging from this description, this bottle should be a vacuum thermos because it has a two-inch thick sandwich at the bottom, and it should be a vacuum sandwich, because only two inches thick filler cannot be insulated for a long time. It does not say what material the bottle is made of, but says that it looks similar to pottery, so the material should be ceramic rather than glass or metal. Zhang Yuqing did not know the production age of this bottle, nor did he know whether it was imported from the West or produced by the Song Dynasty itself. But Zhang Yuqing, as a son of a high-ranking official, should be well-informed, his friends are not ordinary civilians, all kinds of high-end luxury goods at that time, even if they can't have, they should at least have heard of, but they don't know anything about the thermos, that at least shows that in the late Northern Song Dynasty where Zhang Yuqing lived, there was no vacuum thermos bottle, if you take this matter as a proof that vacuum thermos bottles can be produced at that time, it is more far-fetched.
There is a strange thing in Zhang Yuqing's thermos bottle, that is, the little ghost fire pattern depicted on the inner wall of the sandwich layer, which shows that the person who made this bottle does not know the principle of bottle insulation, he thinks that there is a small ghost hidden inside the fire to keep the water in the bottle temperature, which is like when the radio first entered China, many people did not know the principle of broadcasting, they thought that there was a small person singing inside.
Perhaps it can be speculated that in Zhang Yuqing's time, or in his previous era, there was a craftsman who saw a thermos bottle and felt very magical, although he did not understand the principle that the bottle could keep warm, but he was clever, he still made one, but he did not want this rare artifact and its production method to be known, so he buried it in the soil, secretly, and later lost. And how the little ghost fire pattern on the inner wall of the bottle sandwich is carved is even more bizarre, this craftsman must have a unique skill that no one knows.
In addition, another event recorded in the Yi Jianzhi is also believed to prove that the Song Dynasty was able to produce glass thermoses coated with mercury: "Emperor Huizong tasted purple to flow away from the gall bottle ten, Fu Xiaohuan, mission craftsman Fan Jintuoqili." The demonstrators of the holding of the vessel all tied their hands and said, "When the gold is placed in the middle, when it is ironed and burned with iron grates, it is appropriate, but the neck is narrow and intolerable, and it is brittle and thin, and it will be cured, and it will be broken, and it is better to be guilty than to dare to do it." 'Don't be strong, in the middle of the store.' On his day, during his travels, he saw that the pewter buckled the pottery very finely, and tried to teach it: 'For me Tori.' 'The work is not proposed again, but about Tomorrow will come to take it. That's it. "I see ru trick ability, out of the forbidden garden of the right, Gu Qu dwelling here, not poor and tired?"' For it is true. Answer: 'Easy ear.' 'To be with it is to go with it, and to play its own thing. The Lord also wanted to see it in person, and for his good fortune, he called on the goldworkers to appear in court and inquire about them one by one, as yesterday said. The tin worker went alone, took the gold forging, thin as paper, and lifted it and wrapped it around the outside of the bottle. The crowd said, 'If so, who can't?' Gu Zhi Ru folk workers, how to do this. The man laughed, and the one who was wrapped in the russian peeling was staked on a silver spoon, and inserted into the bottle, and slightly solidified with mercury, covering the mouth of the bottle, and the hole left and right. For a long time, the gold was attached to the full middle, and there was no gap, and Xu used his claw armor to even out it. The crowd looked at each other in amazement. His people said: 'Glass is a vessel, it is not easy to restore the touch of solid objects, the mercury is soft and heavy, and it is not hurtful, although its nature will erode gold, but it is not visible, and it is harmless.' 'Great joy, generous gift, send it.' ”
The meaning of this passage is that Emperor Huizong of Song once handed ten purple glass bile bottles to a small eunuch and ordered him to find a craftsman to paste gold leaf on the inner tank of these bottles. The eunuch took the bottle to the craftsman and explained the requirements to them, and the craftsmen looked at it helplessly, and they said: "To put gold leaf in the inner tank, you must iron it with a soldering iron, but the mouth of the bottle is very small, it cannot accommodate the soldering iron, and the bottle wall is thin and brittle, it is easy to break, if you have to do this, it will be broken, we would rather be blamed than dare to take this job." The eunuch knew that he could not force it, so he took the bottle and left.
One day, he was walking around the market with a bottle and saw a tin maker making tin from pottery molds, making them exquisitely. The eunuch took out a bottle and asked him to put gold leaf on the inner bladder wall. The tinsmith looked at it, said nothing, and only asked the eunuch to come and get it tomorrow.
The next day, the eunuch looked over and saw that the gold leaf had been pasted. The eunuch was overjoyed, so he asked the craftsman, "I see that your skills exceed all the craftsmen in Ouchi, and is it because of poverty that you are doing this here?" Then he asked him how he did it. The tinsmith said, "It's not that hard. The eunuch brought the tinsmith into the palace and reported it to the emperor. Emperor Huizong of Song personally looked at the bottle, and then came to the back garden and called all the goldsmiths in the palace to see how the tinsmiths operated.
The tinsmith first took the gold, forged it into a thin paper-thin gold leaf, and wrapped it around the outside of the bottle. The craftsmen laughed and said, Who wouldn't! The tinsmith laughed and did not answer, only to see him use silver chopsticks to pick up the gold leaf and stuff it into the bottle, then pour some mercury, plug the lid, shake the bottle left and right, after a while, the gold leaf was pasted on the inner wall of the bottle, tightly sewn, there was no gap at all. The craftsmen looked at each other in amazement.
The tinsmith said: "Glassware cannot touch hard objects, only mercury is soft and heavy, and can slowly compact the gold leaf without hurting the wall of the bottle." Emperor Huizong of Song was very happy, gave the tin smith many rewards, and sent him out of the palace.
A careful reading of this passage reveals that this is about putting gold leaf on the inner wall of the bottle, not mercury plating, which is only a tool for applying gold leaf, not the material plated on the inner wall. Since the gold leaf needed to be ironed and beaten, but the glass bottle could not withstand such an operation, the tinsmith thought of a clever way to use mercury. Since mercury is a liquid metal, but it is very heavy, when shaking the bottle, the mercury rotates along the wall of the bottle along the inertia, so the gold leaf is pressed against the wall of the bottle.
To make glass vacuum thermoses, you need the ability to make glass and refine mercury. Mercury can be refined very early in the ancient alchemy of the mainland, but whether there is mercury coating technology, it is unknown; and the glass manufacturing technology, in ancient mainland china, has not been able to develop mature, until the late Qing Dynasty, glass is still an imported expensive item, only the court or the home of the dignitaries have glass windows, ordinary people can only use window paper and fish scale mussel shells or keratin material tiles.
The glass bottles of Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty were supposed to be imported, and the overseas trade of the Song Dynasty was developed, and glass bottles were often imported from Arabia, which were called "large food bottles" at that time. In the first year of the Dao, there are: twenty small glass bottles of eye drops, three glass urns of white sand sugar, a thousand years of jujube, schisandra on the ship, six glass bottles each, a glass bottle of peach on the boat, and twenty glass bottles of rose water.
Large food bottle
Since the Song Dynasty could not produce glass bottles, it was impossible to produce glass thermos bottles. From another point of view, if the Song Dynasty can produce thermos bottles, then the Yuan Ming and Qing dynasties should also inherit this technology, but there is no record of the production of thermos bottles in the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties.
Although the Song Dynasty could not yet manufacture vacuum thermos bottles, it still had a unique insulation technology at that time
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The Song Dynasty was in the Xiaoice river period, the climate was very cold, but the metropolises of Tokyo and Lin'an were very prosperous, shops were open almost all night, and on cold winter nights, people carried tea bottles to the streets and alleys to sell hot tea.
The "Tokyo Dream Record" says: "To the third change, there are bottles of tea sellers, Gaidu people public and private Ronggan, late at night to return to the party." According to the "Record of Dreams", Lin'an in the Southern Song Dynasty "although there was heavy rain and snow in winter, there were also night market plates for sale." After the third change, fang has a bottle to sell tea."
These records all prove that on the extremely cold days of winter, there were also traders selling tea in bottles, which were called "warm water kettles". So in the Song Dynasty, where there was no vacuum insulation technology, how did this "warm water kettle" achieve long-term heat preservation in the cold and harsh winter nights? Historical records are not recorded, but the high wisdom of the ancients is often difficult for people to understand today, so that many ancient cultural relics are difficult to reproduce with modern technology. Maybe one day after the excavation of the Song Dynasty "warm water kettle" physical object, it was found that at that time it had been insulated with aerogel-like materials, and it should not be too surprised.