The history of science and technology in China is both long and rich with many contributions to science and technology. In antiquity, independently of Greek philosophers and other civilizations, ancient Chinese made significant advances in science, technology, mathematics, and astronomy.

Transportation and Infrastructure

Confucian philosophy placed the responsibility for the development of infrastructure on the ruler. The development of inland water transport, which is far less costly than overland transport for bulk commodities, was essential for the growth of a large-scale iron industry, and for transporting the large quantities of grain needed by China's cities. Even into modern times, the length of China's transportation canals has exceeded those of Europe.

In 1615, the missionary-scholar Matteo Ricci, who lived and taught in China for many years, reported, ``This country is so thoroughly covered by an intersecting network of rivers and canals that it is possible to travel almost anywhere by water.'' He also estimated that there were as many boats in China as in all of the rest of the world. From 1405 to 1433, Chinese fleets under Admiral Zheng He carried out seven expeditions reaching as far as Africa and the Red Sea. The first fleet consisted of 317 ships and 26,800 men.

In 215 B.C. the first contour canal was built in China linking the Changjiang (Yangtzee) and the Zhujiang (Pearl) River. The Grand Canal is the longest and largest of all navigation canals in the world. Completed in the reign of Emperor Yang Di (604-17 A.D.), it extended 1,250 miles from the Changjiang River to Beijing. During the Tang Dynasty over 2 million tons of grain were shipped yearly north on the canal, increasing to 7 million tons in the Song Dynasty. Many water projects were developed from as early as 600 B.C. and major dike projects were built to control rivers and to protect coastlines.

The Chinese also developed an extensive network of roads. By 210 B.C., 4,000 miles of imperial highways, equal to the distance built by the Romans, had been constructed in China. The Chinese made major innovations in bridge construction and a number of bridges were so well designed that they are still in use over 1,000 years later. One bridge built in 610 A.D. that still survives bears the inscription to its designer, Li Ch'un, "Such a master-work could never have been achieved, if this man had not applied his genius to the building of a work which would last for centuries to come.''

Ancient Chinese bridges were also highly varied in material and form and an important legacy in the world history of bridge building. It is said that are four million stone arch bridges alone. The stone arch bridge is the most common type of bridges one sees in China . According to historical records, the first stone arch bridge named Lurenqiao (Wayfares' Bridge) was built in A.D. 282 near the ancient Luoyang Palace. In a Luoyang tomb dating back to the early Zhou Dynasty archaeologists found the gate to the burial chamber to be of arch structure showing that the stone arch had already existed in China in about 250 BC.

The techniques employed in ancient Chinese bridges, especially the arch bridge represented by Zhaozhou (Anji) Bridge, have provided a foundation for the development of the modern Chinese arch bridge. This is exemplified by Chinese masterworks that match comparable record-breaking spans around the world such as Danhe Bridge in Shanxi Province (stone arch bridge), Wanxian Yangtze Bridge in Chongqing Municipality (reinforced concrete arch bridge) and Yajisha Zhujiang (Pearl River) Bridge in Guangdong Province (concrete-filled steel-pipe arch bridge). They share a heritage based in the creativity and development of ancient techniques in Chinese arch bridge construction.

Engineering Marvels

The Grand Canal of China - The Grand Canal of China is the world's oldest and longest canal, far surpassing the next two grand canals of the world: Suez and Panama Canal. The building of the canal began in 486 B.C. during the Wu Dynasty. It was extended during the Qi Dynasty, and later by Emperor Yangdi of Sui Dynasty during six years of furious construction from 605-610 AD. The canal is 1,795 Km (1,114 miles) long with 24 locks and some 60 bridges. The original canal route that was constructed during his reign linked the northern region of present-day Beijing with the southern rice-growing region around the city of Hangzhou, on the Huang He (Yellow River). The canal system incorporated and expanded some existing canals, the oldest of which dated to the 5th century bc and connected the Yangtze (Chang Jiang) River and the Huai He. During the 13th century, after Khanbalik (now Beijing) was designated the capital of the Yuan (Yüan) dynasty, sections of the canal system were rerouted to make the journey from north to south more direct.

The Zhaozhou Bridge - The Zhaozhou Bridge is the world's oldest and best preserved big stone arch bridge, having a far-reaching impact on the bridge building of later ages. Credited to the design of a craftsman named Li Chun, the bridge was constructed in the years 595-605 during the Sui Dynasty (581–618). What deserves a special mention is the open spandrel structure of the bridge, which was unprecedented in the world's bridge building history. In Europe, the earliest open spandrel arch bridges are those in France and Luxemburg, but they were built about 1100 years later than the Zhaozhou Bridge of China.

The Zhaozhou Bridge spans 64.4 meters and has a width of 9 meters. The arch foot is 9.6 meters wide with a beam span of 37.02 meters and an arch rise of 7.23 meters. The overall structure of the bridge is a single-hole arch stone bridge, with the central arch made of 28 thin, curved stone slabs arranged in longitudinal direction. Thanks to the good position and proper strains and stresses on the bridge base, the bridge is still in good condition after numerous floods and earthquakes over more than 1,000 years.

The Great Wall - For over 4000 years, the world's greatest empires have come and gone, only China has survived the test of time. Century after century, China's regal emperors mobilized immense peasant armies to accomplish engineering feats unparalleled in human history. Among the groundbreaking innovations were the world's longest canal and a naval fleet mightier than all those of Europe combined. However, none can compare to the colossal 4,000-mile wall that stands as the most ambitious construction project ever built. The Great Wall of China; literally "The long wall of 10,000 Li" is a series of stone and earthen fortifications in northern China, built, rebuilt, and maintained between the 5th century BC and the 16th century to protect the northern borders of the Chinese Empire from Xiongnu attacks during various successive dynasties.

The Chinese were already familiar with the techniques of wall-building by the time of the Spring and Autumn Period, which began around the 8th century BC. During the Warring States Period from the 5th century BC to 221 BC, the states of Qi, Yan and Zhao all constructed extensive fortifications to defend their own borders. Built to withstand the attack of small arms such as swords and spears, these walls were made mostly by stamping earth and gravel between board frames.

Some of the most notable areas of the Great Wall are located in the Beijing Municipality, visited by tourists regularly. The Badaling Great Wall also known as North Pass is a mountain pass of the Jundu Mountain. This part of the wall garrisoned many troops due to its strategic location close to the capital of the empire. The Great Wall includes many interesting sections to be explored; Jinshanling is a section of the wall that is located in the winding mountainous area in Luanping County consisting of 5 passes, 67 towers and 2 beacon towers.

The Forbidden City - The Forbidden City is the world's largest palace complex. Construction of the Forbidden City began in relatively modern times, in the year 1406. The construction took an estimated one million workers 14 years to build hundreds of perfect and beautiful buildings. The Forbidden City served as the seat of government for the Ming Dynasty. There are 800 buildings that have in total about 9,000 rooms. Construction lasted 15 years, and required more than a million workers.Material used include whole logs of precious Phoebe zhennan wood found in the jungles of south-western China, and large blocks of marble from quarries near Beijing. The floors of major halls were paved with "golden bricks" specially baked paving bricks from Suzhou.

From 1420 to 1644, the Forbidden City was the seat of the Ming Dynasty. In April 1644, it was captured by rebel forces led by Li Zicheng, who proclaimed himself emperor of the Shun Dynasty. He soon fled before the combined armies of former Ming general Wu Sangui and Manchu forces, setting fire to parts of the Forbidden City in the process. By October, the Manchus had achieved supremacy in northern China, and a ceremony was held at the Forbidden City to proclaim the young Shunzhi Emperor as ruler of all China under the Qing Dynasty. The Qing rulers changed the names of the principal buildings, to emphasise "Harmony" rather than "Supremacy", made the name plates bilingual (Chinese and Manchu), and introduced Shamanist elements to the palace.

The Chain Pump - One of the inventions of greatest utility which has spread from China throughout the world, so that its origins are no longer realized, is the square-pallet chain pump. As may be seen in the accompanying illustrations, it consists of an endless circulating chain bearing square pallets which hold water, earth, or sand.The pump can haul enormous quantities of water from lwer to higher levels.Depending on how well the pallets were fitted to avoid leakage and on the sturdiness of the machine as a whole, the height that water can be raised by single pump is about fifteen feet.The use of chain pump spread out the China rapidly, so it's not possible to find out who invented it.But according to some historical articles; we can say it's around the first century BC.

Deep Drilling for Natural Gas - The Chinese developed a drilling method by the first century BC and wereable to drill boreholes up to 4800 feet deep. The deep drilling for today's supplies of oil and natural gas is a development from these Chinese techniques.The size of Chinese drilling equipment was remarkable. Derrick could rise as much as 180 feet above ground. Tubes for extracting could be as much as 130 feetlong. At the top of a borehole would be a shaft dug with spades, reaching down to the level of hard rock, whether this was one foot or dozens of feet down. Once the rock level is reached stones with holes through the middle were stacked one on top of another to ground level all perfectly centered so that a long hol 8 to 14 inches wide extended down through them all from ground level to rock level. A drill would be suspended by bamboo cables from a derrick. Cast iron drilling bits was available at the time. These would be dropped on to the rock, and any depth from an inch to three feet a day might be drilled. The bamboo cables were made of strips 40 feet long. A single strength cable would be used down to 1500 feet, but at depths greater than that, the cable was of double thickness.The strength of hemp rope is 750 punds per square inch. The bamboo is nearly four tons per square inch.

The Parachute - Most people know that Leonardo da Vinci left sketches of the parachute, which was the first appearance of the idea in Europe. However, the Chinese seem to have invented the parachute and actually used it well over fifteen hundred years before Leonardo. The first textual evidence we have for this is in the famous Historical Records of China's greatest historian, Ssuma Ch'ien, which was completed about 90 BC. We can therefore safely consider the parachute as dating from at least the second century BC. Ssuma Ch'ien had access to vast archives, and the fact that he attributed the parachute to such remote antiquity means that its origins may well have been some centuries before this time.

As the story goes the legendary hero, Emperor Shun, was fleeing from his father who wanted to kill him. He took refuge in a large granary tower and his father set light to it hoping to burn him to death. But Shun tied a number of large conical straw hats together and jumped, using them as a parachute. From this we can assume that there was indeed a jump by someone and that over the years the tale became attached to a legendary episode in the life of Shun. There was a commentary on the story in the eighth century AD by Ssuma Chen, a different person from the historian previuosly mentioned, who remarked that the hats acted like the wings of a bird making Shun's body light and bringing him safely to the ground.

Bronze, Iron and Steel

Around 300 BC, the Chinese were casting multi-ton iron objects. It was not until the mid-1700's in Europe that such feats of metallurgy were achieved in Britain, the technically most advanced country of Europe. The early success in iron-casting in China was due to a superior form of bellows that delivered a continuous stream of air to a furnace instead of an interrupted stream as from the type of bellows used in the West. No one beforehand would have given much thought or attention to such a seemingly unimportant device as the Chinese bellows, but it turned out to be a crucial technological development. Ancient China was not just technically advanced in iron-making. In a wide variety of technical fields China of 300 BCE was many centuries ahead of Europe and the Middle East.

One of the best examples of how the people of ancient China understood the natural world can be seen in the development of metallurgy. The casting of bronze - a carefully measured mixture of copper, tin, and lead - reached levels of sophistication in ancient China during the second millennium B.C. that were unmatched anywhere else in the ancient world. Enormous quantities of bronze were used to produce weapons and other military equipment, as well as vessels and musical instruments used in religious ritual.

During the third millennium B.C., The Chinese realized that in addition to native copper, certain kinds of brightly colored blue and green rocks contained copper metal "hidden" within them. It was discovered that the mineral galena contained lead, and that cassiterite contained tin, and that these metals could be separated from within the rock, mixed together to create bronze, and then cast to create the objects that were needed. By about 2500 B.C., small copper and bronze objects were being produced in different parts of China. By 1500 B.C., the civilizations in north and central China were producing metalwork that was unsurpassed in the ancient world.

The manufacture superior tools led to a substantial advance in productivity throughout the entire economy. As early as the Third Century B.C., the state of Qin appointed government officials to supervise the iron industry, and penalize manufacturers who produced substandard products. The Han Dynasty nationalized all cast-iron manufacture in 119 B.C. Around that time, there were 46 imperial Iron Casting Bureaus throughout the country, with government officials insuring that cast-iron tools were widely available.

The Chinese also developed methods for the manufacture of steel that were only matched in the West recently. In the Second Century B.C., the Chinese developed what became known in the West as the Bessemer process. They developed a method for converting cast iron into steel, by blowing air on the molten metal, which reduced the carbon content. In 1845, William Kelly brought four Chinese steel experts to Kentucky, and learned this method from them, for which he received an American patent. However, he went bankrupt, and his claims were made over to the German, Bessemer, who had also developed a similar process.

Under the Song dynasty, the iron and steel industry reached a level that was spectacular, compared to that in Europe. Between 850 and 1050, iron production increased 12-fold. By 1078, North China was producing more than 114,000 tons of pig iron a year. In 1788, seven hundred years later, England's production of pig iron was around 50,000 tons. Unfortunately, instead of being ruled by philosopher-kings, ancient China since the Han Empire was ruled by scholar-bureaucrats who over time stultified the civilization. The Mandarins were a privileged class and did not want anyone disturbing their status quo and endangering the system. Over the centuries the heavy hands of these bureaucrats slowed the previously dynamic society of China to a standstill and ultimately caused it to regress.