Elliot Lee

It’s fascinating that so many things are attributed to the Chinese. This includes developments in navigation, mathematics, and medicine. The Chinese invented or discovered porcelain, paper, church bells, rudders, solar wind, the circulation of blood in the human body, the suspension bridge, the technique for drilling for natural gas, the iron plough, the mechanical clock, the seismograph, planting and hoeing techniques, the umbrella, and the compass.

Some people asked me for more information about the umbrella, so I decided to take a minute to research it a bit myself. According to Wikipedia, the “collapsible umbrella is said to have been invented during Cao Wei in ancient China, roughly 1,700 years ago.” During the Wei Dynasty, these umbrellas were designed possibly either from large leaves or from the tent. Fascinatingly, the Chinese character for umbrella is a pictograph resembling the modern umbrella in design!

via About.com

The first Chinese kites, used for both entertainment and miliatry communication, were already in flight 2,000 years before the European ones. Stirrups were used in China 400 years before they appeared in the West. The Chinese developed the concept of zero, using the actual “0″ before 686 AD. It was used in conjunction with the traditional Chinese counting board and abacus.

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