LOST & FOUND #7 …

Excellent Reading:
--- The Lost Discoveries from the beginning of Recorded History to the Renaissance --- Lost Discoveries - Dick Teresi.

LOST & FOUND
#7 India / China

India

  • India stoneware - 3rd millenium B.C., (centuries later in China)
  • For over 1,000 years they had little warfare
  • Same weights & measures for > 1,000 years

China

  • 2nd millenium B.C.:
    • GUNPOWDER (salt peter, charcoal, sulfur - Daoist alchemists - many blew up mixing it - published not to mix with arsenic, since could light on fire)
    • COMPASS
    • PAPER/PRINTING
    • cast iron, porcelain, stern post & rudders for ships, canal lock gates, stirrups & harnesses for horses, fishing reels, hot air balloons, seismograph, whiskey, gimbals, umbrella, crank handles, kites, mechanical clocks, paper money, convertible bank notes, agricultural row cultivations, iron plough, seed drill, fantastical fireworks, magic mirrors, rocket propelled toy called "earth rat"
  • 1040 A.D. Tseng Kung-Liang published formula for gunpowder for fire weapons: incendiary arrows & bullets, burning bomb with hook for wood, trebuchet bomb, hand grenade
  • 1288 A.D. flame throwers became guns, then a massive group of flame throwers called "the ingenious mobile ever victorious poison fire rack", & then a 36 barrel cartwheel gun carried by a mule, & then all sorts of bombs (even one with human excrement)
  • Stirrup caused Knight in Europe, but gunpowder caused downfall
  • 4th century B.C. - IRON
  • 3rd century B.C. annealing (good plough shares, swords, even iron buildings, then later, good hoes: major efficiency of farming labor - other tilling of fields was perhaps mankind's single greatest inefficiency of all time before good ploughs and hoes)
  • 2nd century B.C. good steel (good hand tools: chisels, drills, axes etc. - not until 1300's in Europe)
  • Bessemer process of making steel by blowing oxygen on molten iron to remove carbon (cast iron has 4.5% carbon, whereas steel has hardly any) 1856 by Bessemer in England, was earlier done by William Kelly in Eddyville, Kentucky in 1845, who got it from some Chinese from 2,000 years earlier
  • 1863 Siemens Process, England - 1,000 years earlier in China by General Qi Jiguang - good steel for sabers, etc. by baking cast iron overnight with wrought iron
  • 1st century A.D., iron suspension bridge (1809 iron Merrimac Suspension Bridge)
  • iron chain drives: 976 A.D. Chang Ssu-HsiAn (large clock), his successor, 1090 A.D., Su Sung (large astronomical clock called the "Celestial Ladder")
  • 1897 European bicycle uses chain drive (ironical that Chinese now use bicycle for much transportation and are the originators by over 900 years)

Questions

  1. We argue every few years over standard weights and measures. How long did the ancient Indians keep their system? Did they fight during that time?
    They had little warfare and standard weights & measures for over 1,000 years.
  2. What should you NOT mix with gunpowder – and why?
    Don’t mix arsenic and gunpowder because it can light while mixing.
  3. When was the bomb with human poop invented?
    It was invented in 1288 A.D. in China.
  4. During the time China found out how to fight with gunpowder, she also had a very inefficient method of tilling fields. Some historians claim that this is the greatest waste of humankind’s energies of all time. How long was it between the invention of gunpowder and the invention of the plowshare?
    From the invention of gunpowder (2,000 B.C.) to the invention of good steel for plowshares (300 B.C.) it was 1,700 years.
  5. How do you make steel from iron?
    You blow oxygen on molten iron to remove most of the 4.5% carbon.
  6. If America and the west was not first to find ways to make tools, why, in your opinion was the Industrial Revolution (which we are still in) here in the west?
    Because the freedom to experiment in America led to many inventions.