Chinese inventions

By jason.aungst
  • 1200 BCE

    Tea

    Tea
    For several thousand years, tea—made by letting tea leaves steep in boiling water—was drunk mostly as medicine. However, by the 8th century C.E., tea had become a hugely popular everyday beverage throughout China. Tea houses had sprung up throughout the country.
  • 300 BCE

    Magnetic Compass

    Magnetic Compass
    Your compass
    is a magnetized needle that aligns itself with Earth’s magnetic poles so that one end points north and the other south. By the Song dynasty, the Chinese were using this type of compass to help them navigate on long voyages.People still use the same kind of device today.
  • Period: 300 BCE to 1400

    Chinese History

  • 200 BCE

    Steel

    Steel
    The Chinese first made steel, a very useful metal, before 200 B.C.E . Steel is made from iron, but it is less brittle than iron and easier to bend into different shapes.
  • 100 BCE

    Porcelain

    Porcelain
    Porcelain Another Chinese invention is a type of fine pottery called porcelain. Some historians think that the Chinese produced the first porcelain as early as the 1st century C.E.
  • 200

    Paper

    Paper
    The Chinese invented the art of papermaking by the second century C.E. The earliest Chinese paper was
    probably made from hemp and then the bark of the mulberry tree. Later, the Chinese used rags.
  • 700

    Printer

    Printer
    The invention of paper made another key
    development possible: printing. In about the 7th century,
    the Chinese invented a technique called woodblock
    printing. The printer first drew characters (symbols) on
    paper. He then glued the paper to a wooden block. When
    the glue was dry, the printer carved out the wood around
    the characters, leaving the characters raised on the wood.
  • 800

    Mechanical Clock

    Mechanical Clock
    The Chinese developed the first mechanical clock in about the 8th
    century. The new clock was more accurate than earlier timekeeping devices, such as sundials and hourglasses. The
    Chinese devised a wheel that made one complete turn every 24 hours.
  • 1300

    Rocket Technology

    Rocket Technology
    Rocket technology was developed in China during the Song dynasty. Rockets were powered by a black powder made of saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur. At first, rockets were used only in fireworks. Later, the Chinese used them as weapons. They even developed a two-stage rocket for their armies. The first stage propelled the rocket through the air. The second stage dropped arrows down on the enemy.
  • 1400

    Movable Type

    Movable Type
    Movable type consists
    of separate blocks for each character. Printers made their
    type by carving characters out of clay and baking them.
    To print, they selected the characters they needed and
    placed them in an iron frame in the order they would
    appear on the page. When the printing job was done, the
    type could be removed from the frame and rearranged to use again