The Book describes 100 innovative mechanical devices, including the camshaft, some 80 of which are trick vessels of various kinds, along with instructions on how to construct them.
The fire lance was a very early gunpowder weapon that appeared in 10th century China during the Jin-Song Wars.
A dry dock is a narrow basin or vessel that can be flooded to allow a load to be floated in, then drained to allow that load to come to rest on a dry platform.
Economic historian Robert Hartwell writes that the Chinese of the Song Dynasty innovated a “partial decarbonization” method of repeated forging of cast iron under a cold blast.
The world’s first movable type printing press technology for printing paper books was made of porcelain materials and was invented around C.E. 1040 in China during the Northern Song Dynasty by the inventor Bi Sheng.
In China, pyrotechnicians were respected for their knowledge of complex techniques in mounting firework displays. Chinese people originally believed that the fireworks could expel evil spirits and bring about luck and happiness.
A panemone windmill is a type of vertical axis wind turbine. It has a rotating axis positioned vertically, while the wind-catching blades move parallel to the wind.
The first documentation of the cotton gin by contemporary scholars is found in the fifth century C.E., in the form of Buddhist paintings depicting a single-roller gin in the Ajanta Caves in western India.
A note in the text Cho Keng Lu, written in 1366, describes a sulfur match, small sticks of pinewood impregnated with sulfur, used in China by “impoverished court ladies” in C.E. 577 during the conquest of Northern Qi.
