In the previous two articles, we have introduced in detail two of the four great inventions of ancient China. They are papermaking and printing. Like brothers, these two inventions complement each other, which is conducive to the dissemination of scientific and technological and cultural knowledge in the world, and jointly promotes the process of world history and culture. As one of the four ancient civilizations, china has influenced the world not only in the ways and methods of cultural media. We have also made great contributions to the development of world navigation history, the promotion of world geographical discoveries, and the opening of the era of global navigation.
The Four Great Inventions of Ancient China
And what has led to all this development is the invention we are going to talk about today--- compass.
Before talking about the compass, I will tell you about another great invention of ancient times--- guide car. The working principle of the two cannot be said to be unrelated, but only that they are unrelated.
Guide car
Legend has it that in ancient times, the Yellow Emperor of the Huaxia tribe fought against the Jiuli tribe. The Yellow Emperor made a guide car to guide the soldiers, but this is just a legend. According to historical records, Ma Jun, the inventor of the Three Kingdoms era, once built this kind of guide car, but unfortunately it was later lost. In 417 AD, when the Eastern Jin dynasty general Liu Yu (later the founding emperor of the Song Dynasty) marched to Chang'an, he had obtained an old guide car from the Later Qin ruler Yao Xing, the machinery inside the car had been lost, and when the car was walking, it could only be turned by people to turn the hand of the wooden man to make it point south. Later, Emperor Xiao Dao of Qi gao achieved the imitation of Zu Chongzhi.
A guide car invented by Zu Chongzhi
Unlike the compass, which utilizes the geomagnetic effect, it does not use magnetism. The Guide Car is a simple mechanical device that points the direction with a gear drive. It is to rely on manpower to drive the two-wheel guide car to walk, so as to drive the wooden gear in the car to rotate, to transmit the difference between the two wheels when turning, and then drive the pointing wooden person on the car to the opposite angle of the direction of the car turning, so that the wooden person on the car indicates the direction, no matter where the car turns, the wooden person's hand always points to the direction indicated by the wooden person when the guide car starts, "although the car is returned to the road and the hand is often guided."
The working principle of the compass is actually relatively simpler. In middle school physics, the Earth is equivalent to a large magnet, and there are geomagnetic poles near the north and south poles of the Earth. These two magnetic poles and the geographical poles have a magnetic declination angle, which does not coincide exactly. The magnets on the surface of the earth, when they can rotate freely, will indicate the north and south due to the principle of attraction and same-sex repulsion of magnets. This principle has not yet been understood by the ancients, but this kind of phenomenon has been discovered by the ancients.
In the pre-Qin period, iron tools began to appear in production and life. When searching for iron ore, magnetite is often encountered. Magnetite composition is ferric oxide - chemical formula Fe3O4, alias iron oxide black, magnet, iron absorbing stone, it is a magnetic black crystal, so also known as magnetic iron oxide. These discoveries have long been recorded in several passages of the Pipe: "There is a magnet on the mountain, and there is gold and copper under it." There is a similar record in the Classic of Mountains and Seas. The iron-absorbing properties of magnets have been discovered very early, and the nine volumes of Lü's Spring and Autumn have a mastery chapter: "Ci Zhao Iron, or Introduction to It." Before the Han Dynasty, the ancients wrote magnets as "ci stones", and the ancients regarded magnet attraction iron as the attraction of loving mothers to their children. He also believes: "The stone is the mother of iron, but there are two kinds of stones, kindness and unkindness, and the loving stone can attract his children, but the unkind stone cannot attract." This is also the reason why the name magnet comes from today.
magnetite
In the Warring States period, the earliest magnetic pointer appeared, it was Sinan. The artifact of the square plate spoon diagram that we often see is Sinan. According to the "Records of Ancient Mines", it first appeared in the area of Cishan mountain in Hebei during the Warring States period. According to modern archaeologists, natural magnetite is used to form a spoon-shaped thing, placed on a smooth copper plate, the disk is engraved with directions, using the role of the magnet guide, you can distinguish the direction. The shape of the spoon is taken from the Big Dipper, and the handle of the spoon stops and points south. The only physical piece found so far is in Chengdu, Sichuan, which is the ancestor of the compass used today.
Sinan
Although Sinan can point to the south, Sinan is cumbersome to make and not easy to carry. In the Jin Dynasty, there were guide boats again. However, the principle structure of the guide boat has been lost, and it is not possible to determine whether the guide fish is using magnetic guides. Exactly how the guide boat is guided is still a mystery. So people began to explore other ways, saying that the guide device became miniaturized and easy to carry.
In the Tang Dynasty, the activities of public opinionists were quite active, and began to emphasize the choice of direction, and finding a more convenient pointer than a magnetic spoon became a top priority. So the guide iron fish or tadpole-shaped iron pointer and water float needle came into being.
Regarding the preparation method and shape of the guide fish, the method is recorded in the first volume of the Northern Song Dynasty's "General Outline of the Martial Classics". Its method is: "Cut with thin iron leaves, two inches long, five points wide, sharp as a fish, burning it in a charcoal fire, waiting to be red, with iron plutonium fish head out of the fire, with the tail facing the sub-position, dipped in the basin, no tail number of points to stop, with a secret device to receive it." "This method uses the geomagnetic field to magnetize the ferrous sheet, and knowing that the slight downward tilt of the fish-shaped iron sheet is beneficial to magnetization, the effect of the so-called magnetic inclination in modern science has actually been discovered."
Guide fish
Regarding the production method and shape of the water float magnetic needle, the Northern Song Dynasty Shen Kuo's "Mengxi Pen Talk" volume 24 years of methods. The text reads: "The Fang family can guide the point with the magnet stone." This kind of steel needle magnetization method summed up by Kan public opinion experts in practice was promulgated by Shen Kuo's hand, which effectively promoted the application and popularization of magnetic needles in the two major fields of Kan public opinion and navigation. The compass entered the stage of using magnetic needles, and the study of the device method was on the agenda. Shen Kuo comprehensively studied and compared the advantages and disadvantages of the "water floating" method, the "finger claw" method, the "bowl lip" method and the "wisp hanging" method, and believed that the "wisp suspension" method was the best. "The method is to take the cocoon of the new silk, with mustard wax, embellished on the waist of the needle, and hang it in the place of no wind, then the needle is often guided." The small magnets hanging in modern magnetometers use this similar method.
Water floating magnetic needle
The principle of the guide fish is consistent with the principle of the water floating magnetic needle. The accuracy of the magnetic needle finger is not the same as that of Sinan and the guide fish, so the invention of the magnetic needle soon led to the discovery of magnetic declination.
Although the magnetic declination angle has long been noticed, it was not until Shen Kuo said in volume 24 of the Mengxi Pen Talk that the magnetic needle "is often slightly eastward, not all south". In the West, the magnetic needle was not known to be southward until the 13th century. When Columbus (1451-1506) crossed the Atlantic Ocean in 1429, the phenomenon of magnetic declination was officially measured.
The appearance of the compass. After the advent of magnetic needles, they were used in Kanyu and navigation. In order to be easy to use, easy to read, coupled with the discovery of magnetic declination angle, put forward higher requirements for the use of compass skills, Kan public opinion first combined the magnetic needle with the indexing disk to create a new generation of compass - compass. However, on some occasions, the water floating magnetic needle in the bowl is still in use, so Shen Kuo's "Mengxi Pen Talk" volume 24 is called "water floating and shaking". Jiangsu, Hebei and Liaoning Brigades have unearthed special needle bowls for compasses without scales from the Yuan Dynasty. Unfortunately, when the ship was still using the floating needle and needle bowl, the Kanyu compass ran far ahead.
This is also why many people criticize Chinese invented gunpowder for fireworks, others used to make guns and artillery powder to invade colonization; Chinese invented a compass for looking at feng shui: others used for geographical discoveries to pave the way for colonization.
Luopangu was called "Ground Snail" and "Ground Snail". It is divided into water compass and dry compass.
Ming Dynasty water compass
The "Meridian Needle" article of the Southern Song Dynasty's "Record of Reasons" said: "The ground snail, or has a meridian needle, or uses a meridian needle." Zeng San was a native of Linjiang, Jiangxi (present-day Qingjiang, Jiangxi). In 1985, Linchuan, Jiangxi, not far from the Gorge River, unearthed the world's earliest model of the Kanyu drought, which can be corroborated with the record of the "Record of Words". In May 1985, the tomb of Zhu Jinan of the Southern Song Dynasty in Linchuan, Jiangxi (buried in 1198) unearthed two pieces of porcelain servants with the ink book "Zhang Xianren" at the base. Mr. Feng Shui "Zhang Xianren" figurine, holding a compass in his left hand. It is worth noting that the magnetic needle of the compass is fundamentally different from the magnetic needle of the water compass, and the middle is enlarged in a diamond shape, and there is a clear round hole in the center of the diamond shape, which clearly indicates that this is a dry compass supported by a shaft.
Qing Dynasty lacquer wood dry compass
China's magnetic needles and compasses have been transmitted to the west through land and water, which have had a major impact on the process of human civilization. Previously, historians believed that the water compass of the magnetic needle in the water was the same as the compass, which was invented in China, but the dry compass was invented in Europe and was only introduced to China through Japanese ships in the 16th century. Today, the Linchuan compass proves that the invention right of the dry compass also belongs to China. The dry compass was introduced to Europe through Arabia and matured in Europe. The Europeans further improved this dry compass, which is very convenient to use. Although this improvement did not increase or even "improve" the knowledge of magnetism, it had a positive impact on the maritime industry. The Age of Discovery and geographical discovery began. But what followed was the barbarism and bloodshed behind the so-called Western "civilization" that brought hundreds of years of suffering to the people of the world.
History of the compass
In modern times, there are more things to distinguish the direction. Traditional compass, base station positioning, GPS satellite positioning and so on. For example, the navigation on our mobile phones can not only identify the direction, but also plan where you are going and navigate in real time. At present, our country's Beidou navigation system has also been officially networked and operated.
Beidou navigation
Beidou navigation is a global satellite navigation system developed by China itself, and it is also the third mature satellite navigation system after GPS and GLONASS. Beidou Satellite Navigation System (BDS) and US GPS, Russia's GLONASS, and the European Union's GALILEO are recognized suppliers by the United Nations Satellite Navigation Commission.
This is the ancient Chinese compass that continues to influence the world after the wisdom of the Chinese continues to influence the world.
The application of the compass in navigation has greatly promoted geographical discoveries and maritime trade. The invention of the compass stems from the study of how the ancient Chinese people orient the problem, but also shows that the ancients attached importance to how to orient the problem, for this reason, the compass is known as one of the four major inventions of ancient China. Ancient Chinese used the compass for military and navigational activities, but also for kanjutsu, and later to Europe, playing an irreplaceable and important role in European navigation activities and geographical discoveries. Among the inventions of navigation technology, the compass is also the most important single invention.
Today, the cold knowledge behind the compass of the four major inventions is written here, everyone pays attention to me, and the cold knowledge behind the gunpowder of the four major inventions is written in the next issue!
gunpowder