He was half-life sloppy, not even Xiucai, and was discriminated against throughout his life, but because of his research in acoustics, he became the first Chinese scholar to publish a paper in the top international scientific and technological journal Nature. Not only that, China's first steam engine, the first ship, the first warship, the first school to teach scientific and technological knowledge, the first scientific lecture, the first scientific and technological journal, the birth of the first periodic table, are all closely related to him. He is Xu Shou. He is not only the curtain bearer of traditional Chinese craftsmen, but also the pioneer of modern scientific and technological intellectuals. He was far ahead of the closed and self-imposed late Qing Dynasty.
Model of China's first steamship, the Yellow Crane
Jinling Machine Manufacturing Bureau was founded in 1865, 150 years ago. It is the pioneer of China's national industry, the first modern mechanized chemical factory in Nanjing, and one of the four major arsenals in China, known as the "cradle of China's national military industry". Its site is outside the Zhonghua Gate in Qinhuai District, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, adjacent to the Dabao'en Temple Ruins Park, and is a national key cultural relics protection unit.
Jinling Machine Manufacturing Bureau (now 1865 Creative Park)
Xu Shou, the "father of Chinese chemistry", once worked for the Jinling Machine Manufacturing Bureau. Xu Shou (February 26, 1818 – September 24, 1884), courtesy name Shengyuan, was a native of Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, a famous scientist of the late Qing Dynasty, an enlightener of modern Chinese chemistry, and a pioneer of China's modern shipbuilding industry. He is the author of 15 kinds, including "Chemical Identification", "Continuation", "Supplement", "Chemical Examination Quality", "Chemical Counting", "Easy To Say When Objects Meet Heat", "Steam Engine Toughness", "List of Chinese and Western Names of Chemical Materials", "Law and Western Studies", "List of Chinese and Western Medicines", etc., with about 90 volumes.
In the twenty-third year of Qing Jiaqing (1818), Xu Shou was born in a peasant family in Shegangli, Wuxi County, Jiangsu Province. Although his grandfather did not study, he was quite well-run, farming and business, so he became richer and richer. By the time of his father, Xu Wenbiao, he had become a family of readers, but unfortunately his father died prematurely at the age of 26, when Xu Shou was only 4 years old, and he was raised by his mother Song Shihan and his two younger sisters.
"The Father of Chinese Chemistry" Xu Shou
Xu Shou studied the "Four Books and Five Classics" with his teacher since he was a child, and only hoped to take the road of the imperial examination and shine in the doorway. He once participated in the boy exam, but later thought that the examination was unrealistic, so he abandoned the business of the examination. Despite this, he never gave up on learning. At this time, China was in the midst of the Opium War, and the Qing government, which had been eliminated by the Western Industrial Revolution, was in turmoil. The huge gap between the eastern and western militaries, which was dominated by science and technology, caused a very small number of figures at that time, such as Lin Zexu and Wei Yuan, to begin to notice the progress of Western science and technology and to write books to introduce Western affairs. In society, there is also a gradual emphasis on the application of the world, which coincides with Xu Shou's concept.
The young Xu Shou secretly made the oath of "no two colors, no vain words, and sincerity" and "no nonsense, no nonsense, no nonsense, no star fate feng shui, no talk about witchcraft and wei", and took this as a motto, carefully studied books such as the Book of Poetry, Yu Gong, Spring and Autumn, Book of Han, and Notes on the Water Classics, paid attention to the evolution and changes of ancient and modern geography, and recorded the mountains, rivers, and products recorded in them one by one, so as to truly apply what they have learned. At the same time, because Wuxi is a well-known handicraft town, there are many skilled craftsmen, Xu Shou has heard from a young age, so that he is interested in craft production, science and technology, mathematics, astronomy, calendar, physics, music, medicine, mining, etc., further improve his scientific literacy, the level of hands-on production of craft equipment is also increasing.
New Edition of The Naturalist
In the third year of Xianfeng (1853), Xu Shou and the famous modern scientist Hua Xiangfang went to Shanghai with him, and at the Mohai Library founded by missionaries in London, England, he became acquainted with Li Shanlan, a translator who was engaged in modern Western physics, flora and fauna, mineralogy and other books. They humbly asked Li Shanlan for advice, purchased books, purchased instruments related to physical experiments and took them home for experiments, which greatly enriched their physical knowledge. In 1856, Xu Shou went to Shanghai again and read a Chinese translation of the "New Edition of Naturalism" that introduced the knowledge of modern chemistry, which aroused his great interest in chemistry, and he experimented while reading according to the records in the book, which finally made him a well-known scholar who mastered modern scientific knowledge.
In the eleventh year of Xianfeng (1861), Xu Shou attracted the attention of the Westerners with his "profound understanding of the number of instruments and extensive knowledge", and Zeng Guofan, Zuo Zongtang, and Zhang Zhidong all appreciated him, and was recommended and recruited by Zeng Guofan. In the spring of the following year, Xu Shou was sent to the Anqing military camp to preside over the development of steam-engine-powered ships at the Ordnance Institute. In October of the second year of Tongzhi (1863), he cooperated with Hua Xiangfang and others to build The first steam engine in China, and created a wooden steamship (dark wheel) propelled by a propeller powered by steam. At that time, due to insufficient steam, during the anqing sea trial, it was only 1 mile and stopped, but it created a precedent for China's self-made steamships.
Emperor Tongzhi of the Qing Dynasty gave Xu Shou "the world's first craftsman"
In the third year of Tongzhi (1864), the Anqing Ordnance Office was moved to Nanjing, and in May of the following year, it was merged into the Jinling Machine Manufacturing Bureau, which was established by Li Hongzhang, the viceroy of Liangjiang. In the same year, Xu Shou, with the help of his son Xu Jianyin, continued the trial production of ships. On March 4, 1866, the inaugural voyage ceremony of the ship was held in Nanjing, attended by Chinese and foreign journalists, with a trial voyage of "more than seven hours" and a voyage of "more than 250 miles", and Zeng Jize, the son of Zeng Guofan, named the "Yellow Crane" with the meaning of "Yellow Crane Flying High, Thousands of Miles in An Instant". The "Yellow Crane" has a total length of "more than fifty feet", a load of "twenty-five tons", and a speed of "more than forty miles per hour". Except for spindles, chimneys and boilers imported from abroad, the rest of the raw materials are domestic. This was the first steamship of the Chinese army, and it was from here that China's modern shipbuilding industry set sail.
At the end of the same year, Li Hongzhang and Zeng Guofan wanted to build the Jiangnan Machine Manufacturing General Bureau in Shanghai. Because of his outstanding talent, Xu Shou was sent to The Jiangnan Machine Manufacturing General Bureau in Xiangban, Shanghai. After Xu Shou took office, according to his own understanding, he put forward four suggestions for running the Jiangnan General Bureau of Machinery Manufacturing: "One is to translate books, the second is to mine coal and make iron, the third is to build guns and cannons, and the fourth is to train steamship sailors." He put the translation of books in the first place because he believed that to do these four things well, we must first learn advanced science and technology from the West. In the seventh year of Tongzhi (1868), he and Hua Xiangfang and others not only founded the translation hall of the Jiangnan Machinery Manufacturing Bureau, but also designed and manufactured ships such as "Huiji", "Caojiang", "Surveying the Sea", "Chengqing", and "Yuyuan", creating a new situation in China's modern shipbuilding industry.
USS Huiji
The warship "Caojiang"
In the Translation Hall, he collaborated with the Englishman Fu Lanya to translate books such as "Chemical Identification", systematically introducing the main contents of chemical knowledge in the 1870s and 1880s. At the same time, he invented the nomenclature of transliteration, naming a set of Chinese names for chemical elements. For gold, silver, copper, iron, tin, sulfur, carbon and nourishing gas (now translated as oxygen), light gas (now translated as hydrogen), green gas (now translated as chlorine), light gas (now translated as nitrogen) and other elements that everyone is more familiar with, he followed the previous system and named them according to their main properties. For other elements, Xu Shou cleverly applied the principle of taking the first syllable of the Western language and creating new characters to name them. This naming method adopted by Xu Shou was later accepted by the Chinese chemical community and has been used ever since, which is a major contribution of Xu Shou.
In the thirteenth year of Tongzhi (1874), Xu Shou founded gezhi academy, the first new type of college specializing in the study and experimental natural science in modern China, and founded and issued China's first scientific and technological journal, the Gezhi Compilation.
In the summer of 1878, the seventh volume of the Gezhi Compilation, which had only been published for two years, published an article entitled "Examining the Laws of Lulu". The article is not long, but it has a groundbreaking significance in the history of modern Chinese science and technology, representing the peak that Chinese learned advanced science and technology from the West a century and a half ago.
Gezhi Public School
Compilation of Personality
"Lulu" is the general name of ancient music law in China, and ancient China used the way of string and pipe sound to determine the rhythm, with the string law, and the pipe to determine the tone. However, modern physics practice shows that there is a fundamental difference between the vibration of a string and the vibration of a tube. The 62-year-old Xu Shou read his son's translation of sound, the enlightenment work of modern Chinese acoustics, and he used modern scientific experiments (albeit very rudimentary) to question the author of "Acoustics", the famous physicist john Tydall, a member of the Royal Society, and wrote this "Examination of the Law of Lulu". The article rejects the millennia-old "orchestral union theory" and corrects the traditional acoustic law "air column mode" (i.e., Bernoulli's law).
With Fu Lanya's help, Xu Shou translated his paper into English and transcribed two copies, one to Professor Tindor, who discussed experimental data with him, and the other to Nature, the most prestigious scientific journal in Europe. Although Xu Shou never waited for Dingdall's reply, five months later, the journal Nature published the paper from China under the title of "Acoustics in China." In an editor's note, The editor, Dr. Stone, writes:
It is very surprising that the proof of this little-known fact, which has been corrected by real modern science, is so far away (in China) and implemented with such simple experimental means and so primitive instruments.
Three years after the publication of this article in Nature, Xu Shou died of illness at Gezhi College at the age of 67.
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About the Author
Jin Yuping, a native of Taihu Lake, Anhui Province. After work, good dancing and ink. He has published hundreds of papers, popular science, poetry, miscellaneous feelings and other articles. He is the author of many books such as "Theory and Practice of CPPCC Work", "Poetry In Qinhuai", "Zheng and Cultural Research Materials", and edited "Qinhuai Night Talk" and "Monogatari Flower Lugang". He is also the president of Jiangzuo Poetry Society, the secretary general of Nanjing Zhenghe Research Association, the member of Jiangsu Calligraphers Association, the Nanjing Calligraphers Association, the Jiangnan Poetry Society, and the vice president of Qinhuai Charity Calligraphy and Painting Institute.
Review: Zhang Xingyu
Published by: Yu Xiaohui