Invention Of The Song, Tang, And Ming Dynasties

Throughout all dynasties technology has majorly advanced and caused hurdling development throughout the Song, Tang, and Ming dynasties. The Tang dynasty (618-906) cherished a golden Age of innovation and success in science and technology culminating into the Song dynasty (960-1279). The broad exchange of goods and information through the Tang dynasty, with a high value placed on observation and examination, defined the Song and set the footing for vigorous scientific innovation. From these strong and advanced dynasties, the Ming was propelled forward in more creation and innovation setting a successful path forward for more to come. The scientific and technological advances made throughout the Tang, Song and Ming period utilized significant

influence on developments overseas as well as at home for centuries to come. The main scientific and technological innovations ranged from agriculture, medicine, military technologies to be later discovered and education.
During the period of the Tang Dynasty from 618 to 906, many inventions were made in science and technology.

The Tang Dynasty was a creative time period and had one of the most influential inventions in the world, gunpowder. The Chinese did not use gunpowder for guns but to invent rockets and fireworks. This was founded by an alchemist who “mixed 75 parts of saltpeter, 10 parts of sulfur, and 15 parts of charcoal.” This mixture did not contain life-threatening properties, but exploded when exposed to an open flame and went off with a flash which led to the discovery of gunpowder and the impact it would have on humankind. Furthermore, the Tang Dynasty developed an early air cooling system in 747. This began when the emperor had a cool hall constructed in the imperial palace. The device (air conditioner) that was used, is commonly known as Tang-Yulin which had “fan wheels that were powered by water and functioned like an air conditioner. The cooling system also included high rising jet-streams of clean mountain water.” This invention was for a higher class because it was more expensive, also, it allowed people to be more comfortable, and do more in such a hot area of the world. Though this was the first dynasty that started technology other ideas sparked from previous dynasties as well as new dynasties to come to take some of the inventions made by the Tang dynasty into consideration to elaborate onto

theirs.
Throughout the Song dynasty, new inventions began to flourish and make an impact on education and access to supplies for learning, such as books.

One of the most important inventions of their time was a movable printer. A movable type enhanced a “widespread use of woodblock methods of printing thousands of documents and volumes of written literature, consumed eagerly by an increasingly literate public.” The advancement of printing had a big impact on education and the scholar-official class. Because more books could be made faster as well as more produced, printed books were cheaper compared to handwritten copies. The enrichment of widespread printing in the Song period allowed a rise in social mobility and the expansion in education which increased over time. The movable type invented by Bi Sheng was exceeded by the use of woodblock printing because of the limitations that Chinese character writing systems had. But movable type printing continued to be used and was improved in later periods. It was soon put into place that a faster typesetting process, which improved “Bi's baked-clay movable type character set” with a wooden one, and experimented with a tin metal movable type. “The wealthy printing patron Hua Sui of the Ming Dynasty established China's first metal movable type (using bronze) in 1490. In 1638, the Beijing Gazette switched their printing process from woodblock to movable type printing.” Over time, large printing businesses began to higher movable type

printing propelling them forward in this invention. Though this aspect was in education more advances were made throughout the Song dynasty making is a great era of China. Such as advancements in hydraulic engineering and nautical technology invention thrived. This advancement allowed a pound lock for a canal system which let on different water levels to be lowered and raised for different parts of a canal which helped the safety of canal traffic which would give larger barges to pass through. The song dynasty soon after invented watertight bulkhead compartments for ships that would allow possible damage to be done to a boat without it sinking. If it did sink the Chinese would suspend the boat out of the water and fix it. The Song used cross beams to hold the ribs of the ship to hold and strengthen them in a skeletal like structure. As well as stern mounted rudders which were mounted on Chinese ships. Furthermore, during the song dynasty, they devised a way to mechanically lower and raise rudders for a ship to travel in different water depths. They had protruding teeth of anchors that were in a circular pattern instead of one direction which made them more reliable for anchoring ships. One of the biggest innovations was the compass to use at sea which benefited the boats and the songs urge to make them more reliable and successful than before. CONNECTION TO TANG
The Ming Dynasty was the most thriving/successful eras of China. One of the reasons for this was because of the invention of woodblock color printing, paper, and the two-color printing process. It exceeds the other precede printing techniques from dynasties ranging before it. “Woodblock carving and wood movable type were enhanced to perfection. The massive production of documents was also made easy and possible because of the invention of the two-color printing process.” The variety of printing reached the highest level in history and allowed china to succeed in time to come. As well as printing traditional books like classics, history, philosophy in large amounts the gazetteers, books on science and technology, books on craftsmanship, plays, and novels were also printed in big quantities. Furthermore, the style of characters used especially for printing, (the Song style) became more refined and became widely used allowing an expand in culture as well as new ideas for newer technology and ways to refine old ones. This invention not only pushed the Ming dynasty forward but showed how they built off of the following dynasties before. In the Tang dynasty they started making movable printers and in the ming, they altered and switched their design building off of the Tangs. These two dynasties had similar ideas and the Ming dynasty coming after the Tang built off of it to make a newer and more acceptable design for the time period they were involved in.