China is one of the earliest countries in the world to invent and use machinery for profit, and some inventions are in the forefront of the world. It has made high achievements in mechanical principles, structural design and power applications.
Today's science and technology are precisely developed from the science and technology of the past. Studying and understanding the history of China's scientific and technological development and exploring its development laws will play a role in learning from history and learning from the past.
simple machine
Between 8000 BC and 2800 BC, there were pottery wheels (turntables for pottery making), and agricultural tools appeared about 6000 BC to 5000 BC, in addition to stone axes and stone knives, there were also stone hoes, stone shovels, stone sickles, mussel sickles, bone sickles and bone scythes. Stone axes and stone knives already have holes sharpened with hard sand.
In China, about 400,000 to 500,000 years ago, primitive tools such as rough processing scrapers, choppers and triangular pointed tools have emerged. 40,000 to 50,000 years ago, grinding technology appeared, many stone tools have been relatively smooth, the blade is also sharper, and there are single-edged, double-edged, convex, concave and round-edged. Levers, pulleys, called simple machinery in physics. The use of leverage may date back to the time of primitive people. When primitive people pick up a stick and fight a beast or use it to pry a boulder, they are actually using a lever. Stone blades and stone axes used by people in the Stone Age used natural ropes to tie them to wooden handles, or chiseled holes in stone tools and installed wooden handles. This shows that in practice they have learned the rule of thumb of leverage: extending the arm increases the force.
1． Typical Development of Leverage in China - Scales (Balances)
The typical development of leverage in China is the invention of the scale and its wide application. By attaching a sling as a fulcrum to a lever, attaching a heavy object at one end and a weight or weighing hammer at the other end, you can weigh the weight of the object. The ancients called it "weighing" or "weighing." "Right" means weight or weigh hammer, and "weigh" refers to the scale rod. To date, the earliest scales excavated by archaeology are balances in the Warring States Period Chu Tombs on Zuojiagong Mountain near Changsha. It is a product of the fourth to third centuries BC and is an equal-arm scale. Unequal arm scales may have been used as early as the Spring and Autumn Period. Ancient Chinese also invented a scale with two fulcrums, commonly known as the baht scale. With this scale, you can weigh heavier objects by changing the pivot point without changing the scale rod. This is one of the major inventions of the Chinese in scales, and it also shows that Chinese have fully mastered the principle of Archimedean leverage in practice.
2． Orange mallet (jié gāo)
The orange mallet is a slender lever on an erect shelf with a fulcrum in the middle, a heavy object hanging at the end and a bucket hanging in the front. When a person puts a bucket into the water and fills it with water, due to the gravity at the end of the lever, the water can be easily lifted to the desired place. Orange mallets have been quite common as early as the Spring and Autumn Period, and have continued for thousands of years, and are the old-style water lifting appliances common in rural China for generations.
3． Rutted
The reel is also a water extraction tool that evolved from leverage. According to the "Wuyuan" record: "Shi You began to be a reel". Shi Yi was a historian in the early Zhou Dynasty. As early as 1100 years ago, China had already invented the reel. By the Spring and Autumn Period, retarding was already popular. The manufacture and application of reel was closely integrated with the development of agriculture in ancient times, and it was widely used in agricultural irrigation. The application of reel in China has been a long time, although it has been improved, but it has generally maintained its original shape, indicating that 3,000 years ago, our ancestors designed a very reasonable structure of the reel. Before liberation, in the water-scarce areas of northern China, water was still being used to irrigate small areas of land. Some mountainous areas with deep groundwater are still using reels to carry water from deep wells for people to drink. In other industries, there are bull power to drive the reel, and then install other tools for sinking wells or brine
4． Ancient sowing machinery - lěi sì
Our country invented the silk very early on, using the plough to turn the land, sow crops, and carry out agricultural production. Later, with the development of agricultural production, people developed the plough into a plough. "If you want to do a good job, you must first use it", the emphasis on agricultural production tools also reflects the improvement of the ancient level of agronomy in China, Andy turtle Meng's "Qi Qi Jing" of China's first agricultural tool monograph, although it is very short, but it details a kind of paddy field farming tool "Qu Yuan Plough" commonly used in Jiangdong at that time. The curved plough was changed to a curved rudder, the plough frame became smaller, light and flexible, the soil was labor-saving, and the efficiency was high, thus changing the traction method of the two ox lifting bars.
Later, due to the emergence of cattle farming and the rise of iron smelting, iron ploughs appeared in the Warring States period, and the ruins of Yanxiadu in Yixian County, Hebei Province, and HuiXian in Henan province both unearthed iron ploughs from the Warring States period. The invention of the iron plough is a remarkable achievement, which marks a new period in the development of human society and also marks a new stage in the struggle of mankind to transform nature. The iron plough of agricultural tools in the Han Dynasty already had a plough wall, which could play the role of turning and crushing soil.
5． Scoop car
China is one of the earliest countries in the world for the development of machinery. Ancient China had many inventions in machinery, and had its own characteristics in the use of power and the design of mechanical structures. The working people of China have long known how to use cattle and horses to pull carts, and by more than 2,500 years ago, livestock power had been used in agricultural production, when people used livestock to help cultivate and sow seeds in addition to using livestock to pull and transport.
In the Warring States period, there was a sowing machine. China's ancient car, is the ancestor of the modern seeder, because the sowing width is different, the number of rows is different, when the Han WuDi Emperor, Zhao Guo in the foundation of the foot and the two foot, created and invented a three-legged girder that can sow three rows at the same time. One person pulls the cart in the front, and one person hands on the cart in the back to sow seeds, which can sow one acre of land in one day, which greatly improves the sowing efficiency. Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty once ordered the promotion of this advanced seeding machine throughout the country, and also improved other farming tools and promoted the method of substitution of fields, which played a role in promoting the development of agricultural production at that time.
6． Ma Jun created a new type of water lifting machine - rollover.
Rollover, is a scraper type continuous water lifting machinery, also known as keel water wheel, is one of the most famous agricultural irrigation machinery in ancient China. The Book of later Han records that Bi Lan was turned over, and Ma Jun of the Three Kingdoms improved it. Rollovers can be driven by hand crank, pedal, cow, water or wind. The keel blades are used as chains, lying in rectangular grooves, with the body diagonally placed by the river or pond. The lower sprocket and part of the body are submerged in the water. Driving the sprocket, the blade scrapes up the groove and sends the water out to the upper end of the long groove. Such a continuous cycle, the water is transported to the place where it is needed, the water can be taken continuously, the effect is greatly improved, the operation and handling are convenient, and the water intake point can be transferred in time. The earliest application of ancient chain transmission in China is in the overturning car, which is a major improvement in agricultural irrigation machinery.
7． Barrel truck
Hydraulic machinery has also made new progress, the Tang Dynasty already has a cylinder car, from the development of human water to hydraulic water. The barrel car is a wheel-shaped water-lifting machine made of bamboo or wood. The bamboo or wooden cylinder is filled with water, and when the wheel turns to the upper part, the water automatically pours into the sink and enters the field. The water drum of the water drum truck is integrated with the water wheel, which is not only a driving component that accepts hydraulic power, but also a working member that lifts water and pours water, and its mechanism is concise and compact, and the design concept is clever.
8． Ancient advanced grain processing machinery - fan car
In the first century BC, during the Western Han Dynasty, China already had windmills (fan cars) used to remove the chaff in the grain. Similar windmills did not occur in Europe until about 1,400 years later. Fan car is mainly used to remove the chaff in the grain particles, by the frame, shell, fan, feeding hopper and adjustment door, etc., when working, hand-crank the fan, open the adjustment door, let the grain slowly fall, chaff and light debris are blown out of the machine by the wind.
9． Water pillars
At the end of the Western Han Dynasty, there was a water mortar, which was a machine that used water power to scoop rice. The power machinery of the water hammer is a large vertical water wheel, which is equipped with a number of plates and blades, and the shaft is equipped with some dials that are staggered from each other, and the dials are used to move the bar. Each pillar is used to erect a wooden pole with a conical stone at one end. The stone mortar below is filled with rice to be processed. The flowing water hits the water wheel to make it turn, and the dial on the shaft uses the tip of the mortar to make the mortar head fall to the ground together to scoop the rice. With the use of water urns, grain can be processed day and night. Where on the banks of streams and rivers can be set up water pillars, you can also set up multiple water pillars according to the size of the water potential, set up more than two called connected machines, the most common is to set up four pillars.
10． Stone
Lu Ban was an excellent inventor of creation in ancient China. He lived in the late Spring and Autumn period and was called Gongluban, because he was a Native of Luguo, so he was also called Luban. It is said that he invented saws, planers, curved rulers, etc. for carpentry. He also used his wisdom to solve many problems in people's lives. In the era when Lu Ban lived, people wanted to eat rice flour and wheat flour, and they put rice and wheat in a stone mortar and pounded it with a coarse stone stick. It is very laborious to use this method, and the powder mashed out is coarse and fine, and it is very rarely pounded at one time. Lu Ban wanted to find a way to use less force and achieve more results. It is made of two flat cylindrical stones with a certain thickness to make a grinding fan. The middle of the lower fan is equipped with a short vertical shaft, made of iron, and there is a corresponding empty sleeve in the middle of the upper fan, after the two fans are combined, the lower fan is fixed, and the upper fan can rotate around the shaft. On the opposite side of the two fans, there is an empty chamber called the grinding chamber, and the outer perimeter of the chamber is made into a one-volt grinding tooth. When the upper fan has a grinding eye, when the surface is ground, the grain flows into the grinding chamber through the grinding eye, is evenly distributed around, is ground into a powder, flows from the gap to the grinding plate, and the flour is obtained by sieving and removing the bran. Many rural areas still use stone grinding to grind noodles. Mill, originally called 硙 (wei), was called mill in the Han Dynasty. Grinding is human, animal and hydraulic. The grinding of water power as a driving force was invented around the Jin Dynasty. The power part of the water mill is a horizontal water wheel, the upper fan of the grinding is installed on the vertical shaft of the wheel, and the water impulse water wheel drives the grinding rotation, which is suitable for installation in the place where the punching force of the water is relatively large. If the flushing force of the water is relatively small, but the amount of water is relatively large, another form of water mill can be installed: the power machinery is a vertical wheel, and a gear is installed on the shaft, which is connected to a gear in the lower part of the grinding shaft. The rotation of the water wheel is made by the grinding of the gear. These two forms of water mills are relatively simple in structure and widely used.
11． Transportation machinery – the ancient unicycle
The founder of the wheelbarrow is said to be Zhuge Liang of Shu during the Three Kingdoms period, and its predecessor was the wooden cow and the flowing horse. This kind of unicycle, in the north of the Han people compared with the row of large cars smaller, commonly known as "small car", in the southwest Han, with it when driving "clucking" non-stop, commonly known as "chicken bus". Jiangnan Han people because of its front tip, the back of the two push handles like a sheep's horn, commonly known as "sheep horn car". In ancient times, when a woman returned to her mother's house after marriage, she used this kind of wheelbarrow, and when she returned to her mother's house, her husband pushed the car and the wife sat on it, so the two of them both returned to their mother's house. At that time, the unicycle was the most economical and widely used means of transportation, which was a very important invention in the history of transportation.
12． Write down the drum car
The Jili Drum Carriage is an ancient vehicle equipped with a deceleration gear system, named after the wooden man on the car beating the drum to show the number of miles traveled, generally as an imperial travel honor guard vehicle, which was introduced at the latest in the Han Dynasty. Its working principle is to use the rotation of the wheel on the ground to drive the gear rotation, transformed into a cam lever to make the wooden man raise his hand to beat the drum. Drumming once a mile per walk. From its internal structure, the applied reduction gear system has been quite complex, and it can be said that it is the pioneer of the taxi on modern vehicles.
13． Guide car
Legend has it that as early as 5,000 years ago, the Yellow Emperor had invented the guide car, when the Yellow Emperor used it to indicate the direction on the foggy battlefield and defeated Xuan You. At the beginning of the Western Zhou Dynasty, when the Yuetang people in the south were lost due to their return to China, the Duke of Zhou used a guide car to escort the envoys of the Yuetang clan back to China. In addition to the gear transmission, the guide car built by Ma Jun of the Three Kingdoms also has an automatic clutch device, which uses the gear transmission system and the clutch device to indicate the direction. Under certain conditions, the wooden arm is still guided when the car is steered. In terms of technology, it is also a drum car. The guide car is an ancient vehicle that indicates the direction, and it is also one of the vehicles used as an honor guard when the ancient emperors went out to show the might and luxury of the imperial power. The origin of the guide car is very early, and it has been remade several times in the past, but no information has been left. There was no complete information until the Song Dynasty.
14． Seismic instruments
In 132 AD, Zhang Heng created the world's first seismometer, the weather wind geokinetic instrument. Earthquakes are still recorded in our country very early. The Excavated Jin Dynasty Bamboo Book Chronicle records the phenomenon of "di di and spring" in the di shun period and the "shedi crack" in the last year of Xia Jie, which may be the earliest record of earthquakes. According to the history book "Five Elements", after 92 AD, earthquakes occurred almost every year, and the earthquake area was as large as dozens of counties, the ground was cracked and collapsed, the rivers flooded, and the houses collapsed. In view of the frequency of earthquakes, Zhang Heng created a weather wind geokinetic instrument to determine the orientation of earthquakes. The ancients thought that earthquakes were lifted by the earth's gas, so they took this as their name. The ground motion instrument is made of fine bronze, shaped like a large wine jug, with a circle diameter of eight feet in the middle, a protruding sub on the top, and the appearance of the instrument is engraved with seals and figures such as mountains, turtles, birds, and beasts. In the center of the instrument stands a copper pillar (thick and thin sticks). Eight dragons are cast around the outside of the body, head down, tail up, and arranged in eight directions: east, south, west, north, southeast, northeast, southwest, and northwest. The faucet is connected to the engine in the internal channel, and each faucet has a small copper bead in its mouth. On the ground, aimed at the dragon's mouth, there were eight copper toads crouching, their heads held high, their mouths open. When an earthquake occurs somewhere, the pillar falls to that side, touching the tooth machine, so that the dragon head in the direction of the earthquake opens its mouth, spits out copper beads, falls into the mouth of the copper toad, and makes a "dang" sound, and people know which direction the earthquake occurs. Soon after the instrument was made, an earthquake occurred in Longxi on the third day of February in the third year of shundi yonghe, which showed that the sensitivity of the instrument was quite high. That earthquake, up and down the country, was quite shaken. However, due to the great power of the court at that time, this important invention of Zhang Heng did not receive due attention, and the weather wind and ground moving instrument was not preserved. The modern seismometer was only made in 1880 AD, and its principle is basically similar to that of the Zhangheng ground motion instrument.
15． Vientiane bracket
Modern aircraft, missiles and ships can identify directions no matter how fast they move in the air or at sea, thanks to the gyroscope installed. At the end of the Western Han Dynasty (1st century AD), the ingenious "incense burner" is the world's earliest known constant flat bracket, which is exquisitely structured, no matter how the spherical incense burner rolls, the hemispherical furnace in its center can always maintain a horizontal state. The skeleton ball has two rings perpendicular to each other and can be flexibly rotated, and the furnace body can rotate around three vertical axes. The principle is the same as that of a universal bracket in modern gyroscopes.
16． Crossbow
About 30,000 years ago, China invented the bow and arrow, which is the earliest invention in mechanical aspects; indicating that human beings began to use composite tools, and the bow is to use the power accumulated by people in the process of pulling strings to shoot arrows out in the form of instantaneous explosions, which shows that human beings have the knowledge of mechanical storage of power. As Engels said, "The bow and arrow are decisive weapons for the Age of Ignorance, as the iron sword is for the Age of Barbarism and the Age of Firearms for the Age of Civilization." "Bows and arrows are the oldest used ancient weapons, bows and arrows can be fired at distances, primitive people have bows and arrows, it is easier to get prey, you can also subdue those fierce beasts." Later, wars broke out between tribes, and bows and arrows became important weapons. The earliest bows were bows made of a single piece of wood or bamboo, made of animal tendons; arrows were sharpened sticks or bamboo poles. During the Spring and Autumn Period, crossbows appeared, and the crossbow machines that controlled the shooting were already relatively dexterous mechanical devices. The firing principle of the crossbow is the same, it is farther than the bow, it is more lethal, and it overcomes the physical limitation of the bow when pulling the bow and cannot last a weakness. By the Han Dynasty, the processing accuracy and surface finish of the crossbow machine had reached a fairly high level. The Han crossbow has eight specifications, from one stone to ten stones, and the formation of these specifications indicates that mechanical manufacturing standards have been initially established in the Han Dynasty. The crossbow machine left the names of workman, forger, grinder, etc. Song Yingxing (1587~1644)?) In volume 15 of the "Jia Bing Chapter", the method of testing the elasticity of the bow string is described: "Whoever tests the bow force, puts the foot on the string, hangs the bow waist with the scale hook, and when the string is full, the pressure of the scale hammer is pushed, and how much is known", the method is very clever. The book was lost in China for 300 years, and it was only in 1926 that a reprint was retrieved by Japan.
17． Smelting molten iron drainage
Water drainage is a kind of water conservancy blowing device used for iron smelting in ancient China. Most of the early human blowers were skin bags. A furnace uses several sacs, put them together, and arranges them in a row, which is called "drainage bags" to push these sacs with water power, which is called "water drainage". Water drain was invented in the early Eastern Han Dynasty, and was the name of Nanyang Taishou Dushi (?) -38) Invented on the basis of summarizing the practical experience of working people. Because it "uses less force and more work", everyone is happy to use it. During the Three Kingdoms period, Han Ji promoted it to the wei official smelting workshop, replacing the horse row and human row with water drainage, and the four seasons did not stop. Water drainage not only saves manpower and animal power, but also has a strong blowing capacity, thus promoting the development of the iron smelting industry. Water drainage has been used in China for a long time, until the 1970s, when it was still used in some places. The water drainage of the Han Dynasty is speculated by the water pillar and the overturning structure of the same period, and it is also a kind of axle pull rod transmission device, and the detailed technology of the ancient water drainage structure in China was first found in the "Wang Zhennong Book" of the Yuan Dynasty, according to the difference in the placement of the water wheel, it is divided into two types: vertical wheel type and horizontal wheel type. All of them turn the circular motion into a linear reciprocating motion through axles, tie rods and ropes, so as to achieve the purpose of starting and closing fans and blowing air. Because the water wheel rotates once, the fan can be turned up and closed many times, so the blast efficiency is greatly improved.
18． Wooden bellows
Blowers were first leather bags, later fans, and later bellows. Fans were invented around the 10th century AD. The piston bellows was first seen in the Ming Dynasty, is an ancient piston blower, recorded in the Ming Dynasty Song Yingxing's "Tiangong Kaiwu", which is still used today. Each end of the bellows is provided with an air inlet, with a live flap on the mouth, a duct on the side of the box, and an air outlet at the side of the air duct, and a live flap on the mouth. By extending the lever outside the bellows, the reciprocating motion of the piston is driven, prompting the flaps to close together to achieve the purpose of blowing. The power of the wooden bellows has manpower and water conservancy, etc. The bellows automatically opens and closes the trap by piston push and air pressure, making it an effective blasting device for metal smelting and casting.