The Inventions of the Ancient Chinese
To win a trip to China I have to enter a contest to determine the four most useful inventions in Chinese history. In this I will determine eight to ten inventions and nominate the four that I believe to be the most ingenious of all. The first of these inventions is that of silk; which although silk is known to be created naturally through silkworms, China invented how to gather the silk and use it in clothing and paper. Silk was vital to the Ancient Chinese economy because Europe imported a large amount of silk. The creation of silk permitted China to associate with the outside world through trade and led to the creation of the Silk Road. Silk was unique to Ancient China and allowed them to interact with the world up until the silkworm eggs were smuggled out of China and into Europe (Country Facts, 2010).
The second invention of the Ancient Chinese was gunpowder; which when we think about it today we associate it with military use and weaponry, but in Ancient China it was invented by the Taoist monks who through the use of alchemy was searching for the answer to human immortality. The Chinese word for gunpowder actually translates directly as flaming medicine. The search for immortality had failed but the mixture of sulphur, saltpeter and charcoal which the monks used was early gunpowder and it was not originally used for purposes of weapons and military, but for signal flares and fireworks. As the Ancient Chinese military grew they began to use the gunpowder for military aid and developed fire arrows and primitive rockets in times of conflict (Country Facts, 2010).
The third invention of the Ancient Chinese is the compass, which was also, invented for different uses then what it evolved into. The compass was first invented in Ancient China to be used for predicting, but then it was later turned into a directional device.