四大发明英文

中国古代四大发明英文版

The Four Great Inventions are :The Compass, Gun powder, Papermaking, and Printing.

A compass is an instrument containing a freely suspended magnetic element which displays the direction of the horizontal component of the Earth's magnetic field at the point of observation.

The magnetic compass is an old Chinese invention probably first made in China during the Qin dynasty (221-206 B.C.). Chinese fortune tellers used lodestones (a mineral composed of an iron oxide which aligns itself in a north-south direction) to construct their fortune telling boards.

Eventually someone noticed that the lodestones were better at pointing out real directions, leading to the first compasses. They designed the compass on a square slab which had markings for the cardinal points and the constellations. The pointing needle was a lodestone spoon-shaped device, with a handle that would always point south.

Magnetized Needles

Magnetized needles used as direction pointers instead of the spoon-shaped lodestones appeared in the 8th century AD, again in China, and between 850 and 1050 they seem to have become common as navigational devices on ships.

Compass as a Navigational Aid

The first person recorded to have used the compass as a navigational aid was Zheng He

(1371-1435), from the Yunnan province in China, who made seven ocean voyages between 1405 and 1433.

2.The Gunpowder

[ Pitiful: The western people used the gunpowder to produce weapons, while ancient Chinese used it to make fireworks.]

Chinese taoist alchemists were the major force behind the early invention of gunpowder. Emperor Wu Di (156-87 B.C.) of the Han dynasty financed research done by the alchemists on the secrets

of eternal life. The alchemists experimented with the sulphur and saltpeter heating the substances in order to transform them. The alchemist Wei Boyang wrote the Book of the Kinship of the Three detailing the experiments made by the alchemists.

During the 8th century Tang dynasty, sulphur and saltpeter were first combined with charcoal to

create an explosive called huoyao or gunpowder. A substance that did not encourage eternal life, however, gunpowder was used to treat skin diseases and as a fumigant to kill insects before its advantage as a weapon was made clear.

The Chinese began experimenting with the gunpowder filled tubes. At some point, they attached bamboo tubes to arrows and launched them with bows. Soon they discovered that these gunpowder tubes could launch themselves just by the power produced from the escaping gas. The true rocket was born.

3.The papermaking

The word paper is derived from the name of the reedy plant papyrus, which grows abundantly along the Nile River in Egypt. However, true paper is made of pulped cellulose fibers like wood, cotton or flax.

First There Was Papyrus

Papyrus is made from the sliced sections of the flower stem of the papyrus plant, pressed together and dried, and then used from writing or drawing. Papyrus appeared in Egypt around 2400 B.C.

Then There Was Paper

A courtier named Ts'ai-Lun, from Lei-yang in China, was the first recorded inventor of paper circa 105 A.D. Ts'ai-Lun presented paper and a papermaking process to the Chinese Emperor and that was noted in the imperial court records. There may have been papermaking in China earlier than the above date, but inventor Ts'ai-Lun did much for the spread of papermaking technology in China.

Chinese Papermaking

The ancient Chinese first made paper in the following fashion.

? Plant fibers such as hemp were soaked and beaten into a sludge

? The sludge was strained through a cloth sieve attached to a frame that also served as a

drying platform for the resulting paper

Newsprint

Charles Fenerty of Halifax made the first paper from wood pulp (newsprint) in 1838. Charles Fenerty was helping a local paper mill maintain an adequate supply of rags to make paper, when he succeeded in making paper from wood pulp. He neglected to patent his invention and others did patent papermaking processes based on wood fiber.

Corrugated Papermaking - Cardboard

In 1856, Englishmen, Healey and Allen, received a patent for the first corrugated or pleated paper. The paper was used to line men's tall hats.

American, Robert Gair promptly invented the corrugated cardboard box in 1870. These were

pre-cut flat pieces manufactured in bulk that opened up and folded into boxes.

On December 20, 1871, Albert Jones of New York NY, patented a stronger corrugated paper (cardboard) used as a shipping material for bottles and glass lanterns.

In 1874, G. Smyth built the first single sided corrugated board-making machine. Also in 1874, Oliver Long improved upon the Jones patent and invented a lined corrugated cardboard.

Paper Bags

The first recorded historical reference to grocery paper bags was made in 1630. The use of paper sacks only really started to take off during the Industrial Revolution: between 1700 and 1800.

Margaret Knight (1838-1914) was an employee in a paper bag factory when she invented a new machine part to make square bottoms for paper bags. Paper bags had been more like envelopes before. Knight can be considered the mother of the grocery bag, she founded the Eastern Paper Bag Company in 1870.

On February 20, 1872, Luther Crowell also patented a machine that manufactured paper bags.

Paper Plates

Paper foodservice disposables products were first made at the beginning of the 20th century. The paper plate was the first single-use foodservice product invented in 1904.

Dixie Cups

Hugh Moore was an inventor who owned a paper cup factory, located next door to the Dixie Doll Company. The word Dixie was printed on the doll company's front door. Moore saw the word everyday, which reminded him of "dixies," the ten dollar bank notes from a New Orleans' bank that had the French word "dix' printed on the face of the bill. The bank had a great reputation in the early 1800s. Moore decided that "dixies" was a great name. After getting permission from his neighbor to use the name, he renamed his paper cups "Dixie Cups". It should be mentioned that Moore's paper cups first invented in 1908 were originally called health cups and replaced the single repeat-use metal cup that had been used with water fountains.

4.The printing

The Chinese invention of Woodblock Printing, at some point before the first dated book in 868(the

Diamond Sutra)金刚经, produced the world's first print culture. However, it is suspected in western world that book printing may have occurred long before this date.Before Gutenberg, printing was limited in the number of editions made and nearly exclusively decorative, used for pictures and designs. The material to be printed was carved into wood, stone, and metal, rolled with ink or paint and transferred by pressure to parchment or vellum. Books were hand copied mostly by members of religious orders.

Johannes Gutenberg

Johannes Gutenberg was a German craftsman and inventor. Gutenberg is best known for the Gutenberg press, an innovative printing press machine that used movable type. It remained the standard until the 20th century. Gutenberg made printing cheap.[ Johannes Gutenberg and the History of Printing Press]

Printing Processes

Linotype & Ottmar Mergenthaler

Ottmar Mergenthaler's invention of the linotype composing machine in 1886 is regarded as the greatest advance in printing since the development of moveable type 400 years earlier.

Teletypesetter

Teletypesetter, device for setting type by telegraph developed by F.E. Gannett of Rochester, N.Y., W.W. Morey of East Orange, N.J., and Morkrum-Kleinschmidt Company, Chicago, Ill. The first demo of Walter Morey's "Teletypesetter" took place in Rochester, New york in 1928.

Phototypesetting

Louis Marius Moyroud and Rene Alphonse Higonnet developed the first practical phototypesetting machine. The phototypesetter that used a strobe light and a series of optics to project characters from a spinning disk onto photographic paper.

Silk Screening or Serigraphy

In 1907, Samuel Simon of Manchester England was awarded a patent for the process of using silk fabric as a printing screen. Using materials other than silk for screen printing has a long history that begins with the ancient art of stenciling used by the Egyptians and Greeks as early as 2500 B.C. A few years after Simon's patent, John Pilsworth of San Francisco developed a multicolor process of silk screening called screen printing. The term "Serigraphy", comes from the Latin word "Seri" (silk) and the Greek word "graphein" (to write or draw).

Newspapers

One of the earliest newspapers was the Roman Acta Diurna said to have been started by Julius Caesar.