Ancient Chinese Contributions

There have been many contributions made by the ancient Chinese that have benefited us today. A few of those have been: standardized writing, language, money, system of measurement and many more. These were developed by the Qin or Ch’in Dynasty. During the Han Dynasty the Silk Road, papermaking, iron technology (cast iron) plowshares; Moldboard plow, glazed pottery, and the Seismograph. These contributions have all been useful and ingenious. Standardized writing, language, money, a system of measurement and the seismoscope are a few that we really can’t live without. Without standardized writing, language, money and a system of measurement we would not have a way of writing, there would not have been a standardized language of the Chinese culture, standardized money made it easier for trades and such so that people could get a fair trade for things such as grain, barley etc. The system of measurement has given us a universal way of finding the length, volume, area, perimeter, etc. of things.
To me the one contribution we couldn’t live without would be the Seismograph. Chang Heng or Zhang Heng, invented the first seismoscope in AD 132, it was called the Houfeng Didong Yi, meaning “instrument for measuring seasonal winds and the movements of the Earth.” From a description in “Dragons and toads: the Chinese seismoscope of BC 132”. Chinese Science 6: 1-19, that it has a large bronze vessel, which was about 2 meters in diameter; eight points around the top were a dragon’s head is holding bronze balls. To measure an earthquake one of the mouths would open and drop its ball into a bronze toad at the base, making a sound and possibly showing the direction of the earthquake. In AD 143 the seismoscope indicated an earthquake that was not felt, inside the vessel there was a central column that would move along eight tracks, like a pendulum.(Science and Civilization in China, Volume 3: Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and Earth pp.626-635. During ancient Chinese times this invention was necessary due to the vast earthquakes this region experienced. It would enable them to provide more help to the earthquake victims if they were able to tell in which direction they should go following an earthquake. During this time they did not have the fast communication we do today with the telephone and internet so it was important to have a way to know where to head in the aftermath of an earthquake.
Devices that used water to detect earthquakes and record them would be invented centuries later. In 1855, a designer in Italy named Luigi Palmieri designed a mercury seismometer. This seismometer utilized U-shaped tubes that were filled with mercury and were arranged along compass points. This would allow the mercury to flow and make electrical contact that would stop a clock and start a recording drum in which the motion of the float on the surface of the mercury to be recorded. It was the first device of the time that could record the intensity, movement and duration of an earthquake.
The seismographs we know today where made by John Milne, an English seismologist and geologist, he also promoted the building of seismological stations. During the 1880s while working in Japan, British scientists, John Milne, Sir James Alfred Ewing, and Thomas Gray, began to study earthquakes. During this time they founded the Seismological Society of Japan, this society helped to fund the invention of seismographs. The horizontal pendulums that we see in seismographs today were invented by John Milne. This pendulum was improved after World War II with the Press Ewing seismograph, which was developed in the United States for recording long-periods of time. This invention is widely used across the world today for measuring earthquakes. Press Ewing seismograph uses the Milne pendulum, but the pivot has been replaced with an elastic wire to avoid any kind of friction.
Had it not been for the Chinese inventing this mechanism, today we would not be able to know and/or measure earthquakes or tremors Therefore I nominate this invention as the one we cannot live without. Although over the centuries the seismograph has evolved it is still credited to the ancient Chinese, who gave us this invention that has been utilized to help prevent millions of deaths due to earthquakes.

References
Needham, Joseph (1959). Science and Civilization in China, Volume 3: Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Sleeswyk AW, Sivin N (1983). “Dragons and toads: the Chinese Seismoscope of BC 132. Chinese Science 6 1-19