The Four Great Inventions are inventions from ancient China that are celebrated in Chinese culture for their historical significance and as symbols of ancient China’s advanced science and technology.

The Four Great Inventions are:

Compass

Gunpowder

Papermaking

Printing

FAILURE

by James Santagata

  1. Compass – China oriented Walls | West explored Worlds
  2. Gunpowder – China made multicolored fireworks | West put Men on the Moon.
  3. Papermaking – China made toilet paper | West copied toilet paper as top notch, give credit where credit due.
  4. Printing – China printed Decrees & Death Sentences | West printed Treatises, Theories + Technical Manuals

(By why did she fail? They printed wisdom literature. Conversely, Europeans printed technical literature “how to”. When they set out to see the world, they found it awful (disharmonious), when europeans set out to see the world they found it profitable. )

HISTORY

Printing evolved in china from ‘taking rubbings’ of carved Confucian texts. Eventually evolving into raised letters, and then raised letters with ink.

European Mechanical presses

Mechanical presses as used in European printing remained unknown in East Asia. Instead, printing remained an unmechanized, laborious process with pressing the back of the paper onto the inked block by manual “rubbing” with a hand tool. In Korea, the first printing presses were introduced as late as 1881–83, while in Japan, after an early but brief interlude in the 1590s, Gutenberg’s printing press arrived in Nagasaki in 1848 on a Dutch ship.