List of Chinese Inventions - Shang and Later - M

M

• Magic mirrors: In about 800 AD, during the Tang Dynasty (618–907), a book entitled Record of Ancient Mirrors described the method of crafting solid bronze mirrors with decorations, written characters, or patterns on the reverse side that could cast these in a reflection on a nearby surface as light struck the front, polished side of the mirror; due to this seemingly transparent effect, they were called 'light-penetration mirrors' by the Chinese. Unfortunately, this Tang era book was lost over the centuries, but magic mirrors were described in the Dream Pool Essays by Shen Kuo (1031–1095), who owned three of them as a family heirloom. Perplexed as to how solid metal could be transparent, Shen guessed that some sort of quenching technique was used to produce tiny wrinkles on the face of the mirror too small to be observed by the eye. Although his explanation of different cooling rates was incorrect, he was right to suggest the surface contained minute variations which the naked eye could not detect; these mirrors also had no transparent quality at all, as discovered by William Bragg in 1932 (after an entire century of them baffling Western scientists). Robert Temple describes their construction: "The basic mirror shape, with the design on the back, was cast flat, and the convexity of the surface produced afterwards by elaborate scraping and scratching. The surface was then polished to become shiny. The stresses set up by these processes caused the thinner parts of the surface to bulge outwards and become more convex than the thicker portions. Finally, a mercury amalgam was laid over the surface; this created further stresses and preferential buckling. The result was that imperfections of the mirror surface matched the patterns on the back, although they were too minute to be seen by the eye. But when the mirror reflected bright sunlight against a wall, with the resultant magnification of the whole image, the effect was to reproduce the patterns as if they were passing through the solid bronze by way of light beams."
• Mahjong: Jelte Rep writes that the gambling game of mahjong (Traditional Chinese: 麻將; Pinyin: májiàng), which employs a set of over a hundred tiles, was first invented in 1846 by Zhen Yumen, a Qing Dynasty (1644–1912) diplomatic official from Ningbo. However, Rep traces the origins of the game to a card game of the Tang Dynasty (618–907) which used thirty-two wood or ivory pieces in the shape of cards. This evolved into the forty-card game of madiao (馬吊) during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), which had four suits of cards instead of the three found in modern mahjong.
• Manned flight with kites: Although Ge Hong (284–364 AD) hinted in his writing about manned flights using kites, the first solid proof dates to the Northern Qi (550–577) era. The notoriously cruel Emperor Wenxuan of Northern Qi (r. 550–559) executing the entire Tuoba family which had ruled the previous dynasty of Eastern Wei (534–550) by launching them from the top of the 30 m (100 ft) tall Golden Phoenix Tower (near Ye, China) as test pilots for his manned flying kites. According to the account, Emperor Wenxuan first had the prisoners "harnessed with great bamboo mats as wings, and ordered them to fly to the ground from the top of the tower;" all of these men died. However, Wenxuan wanted a greater spectacle, and by the last year of his reign had the prisoners harnessed into large kites shaped as owls; the former Eastern Wei prince Yuan Huangtou (died 559) reportedly flew about 3.2 km (2 mi) before landing, yet was captured and handed over to Bi Yiyun, head official of the censorate, who shortly after had him executed. Records of this account were preserved in the historical work Zizhi Tongjian compiled by Chancellor Sima Guang (1019–1086) in 1084.
• Match, non-friction: The earliest type of match for lighting fire was made in China by 577 AD, invented by Northern Qi (550–577) court ladies as they desperately looked for materials to light fires for cooking and heating as enemy troops of Northern Zhou (557–581) and the Chen Dynasty (557–589) besieged their city from outside. Early matches in China were designed to be lit by an existing flame and carried to light another fire. They were pinewood sticks impregnated with sulfur and needed only a slight touch from a flame to light. This was written in the Records of the Unwordly and Strange by Tao Gu in 950 (Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period), who also wrote that they were once called "light-bringing slaves" before they were commercially marketed as the 'fire inch-stick'.
• Mechanical theater (driven by carriage wheels): The inventors of the field mill mentioned above, Xie Fei and Wei Mengbian of the Later Zhao (319–351 AD), also invented an intricate mechanical theater mounted on a carriage, its figures operated by motive power (i.e. simply advancing the carriage forward). From 335 to 345 AD, they worked at the court of the ethnic-Jie emperor Shi Hu (334–349). The vehicle they crafted was a four-wheeled and 6 m (20 ft) long carriage that was about 3 m (10 ft) wide. On it rested a large golden Buddha statue with a Daoist statue continually rubbing his front with his mechanical hand. The Buddha was also surrounded by ten wooden Daoists who rotated around him in a circuit, periodically bowing to him, saluting him, and throwing incense into a censer. Above the Buddha were nine dragon-headed faucets which spouted water. Like the field mill and the pounding cart of these two inventors, when the carriage halted, so did all of its moving components of mechanical statues and spouting faucets.
• Mechanical cup-bearers and wine-pourers on automatic-traveling boats: The mechanical engineer Huang Gun served the court of Emperor Yang of Sui (r. 604–617) and wrote the book Shuishi Tujing on his inventions, which his colleague Du Bao enlarged and commented on. He constructed seven small boats, called 'wine boats', that were as large as 3 m (10 ft) long and 1.8 m (6 ft) wide which supported a number of mechanical figures of wooden statues called 'hydraulic elegances', each about 0.6 m (2 ft) tall, some of them animals but most in human form consisting of singing girls, musicians playing actual instruments, dancers and tumblers, oarsmen busy rowing, cup-bearers, and wine-pourers all moving simultaneously as if alive. These boats were set to travel at timed intervals along circuits made of winding stone channels and canals in palace courtyards and gardens (designed by Tang Haogui), where guests would gather for special occasions. The cup-bearer stood at the bow of each ship and beside him the wine-pourer; when the ship made automatically timed periodic stops where guests were seated, the cup-bearer automatically stretched out his arm with a full cup of wine. When the guest was done emptying his cup, he placed the cup back into the figure's hands; the latter then waited as the wine-pourer filled a second cup to be emptied. When this guest had been served, the wine boat automatically moved onwards to the next stop. Joseph Needham speculates that the 'wine boats' may have been paddle-wheel-driven; as Robert Temple notes, the paddle wheel ship was already known in China since the Liu Song Dynasty (420–479). Aside from the partial remains of the Shuishi Tujing, an account of these 'wine boats' was also preserved by Huang Gun's contemporary Yan Shigu (581–645).
• Merit system: The earliest example of a merit system dates back to the Qin and Han dynasties. In order to maintain power over a large, sprawling empire, it became necessary for the government to maintain a complex network of officials. Prospective officials could come from a rural background and government positions were not restricted to the nobility. Rank was determined by merit, through the civil service examinations, and education became the key for social mobility. After the fall of the Han Dynasty, the nine-rank system was established during the Three Kingdoms period. The concept of a merit system spread from China to British India during the 17th century, and then into continental Europe and the United States.
• Modular system of architecture, eight standard grades: Although other texts preceded it, such as the 'National Building Law' of the Tang Dynasty (618–907) which was partially preserved in other texts, the Yingzao Fashi published in 1103 by the Song Dynasty (960–1279) scholar-official Li Jie (1065–1110) is the oldest known Chinese architectural treatise that has survived fully intact. It contains descriptions and illustrations detailing the cai fen system (材份制) of eight standard dimensions for module components of timber architecture and structural carpentry. The eight standard grades of module timber components in the Yingzao Fashi, with grade I being the largest and grade VIII the smallest, were used to determine the ultimate proportions and scale of a building as a whole, as all timber hall types—palaces, mansions, ordinary houses, and pavilions—were hierarchically categorized along the lines of which cai fen grade was employed. For example, palace type buildings used only grades I through V, while mansion type buildings never used components larger than grade III and no less than grade VI. In this system of structural carpentry, the smallest grade of VIII is represented by one cai; one cai is equal to the modern equivalent of 15 cm (5.9 in), while one cai is also divided into fifteen fen (hence the title of this modular system).
• Multiple-tube seed drill: The wooden seed drill existed in China by the 3rd century BC, while the multiple-tube iron seed drill was first invented in China by the 2nd century BC, during the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD). The seed drill allowed for greater speed and regulation of distributing seeds in lined rows of crops instead of casting them out onto the farm field.
• Multistage rocket: Although there is still some ambiguity as to whether the earliest rockets of the 13th century were first developed in Europe (i.e. 'ignis volantis in aere' in the work of Marcus Graecus around 1232, although Needham and Davis assert it was most likely a fire lance), the Middle East (i.e. 'sahm al-Khitāi' or 'arrows of China' as referred to by Hasan al-Rhammāh in 1280) or China (i.e. 'di lao shu' or 'ground rat' mentioned in 1264 or the 'chong' mortar used by the armies of the Song Dynasty and invading Mongols during the 1270s), during the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368) the term 'fire arrow' once implied to mean incendiary arrows during the Tang Dynasty was then used to describe the true rocket, producing a headache, as Needham says, for historians; the Huolongjing written by Jiao Yu (fl. 14th to early 15th century) and Liu Ji (1311–1375) during the early Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) described several types of rockets, one of them being a multistage rocket known as the 'huo long chu shui' or 'fire dragon issuing from the water' which, despite its name, was not launched from beneath the water from a primitive submarine but rather at near water-level maintaining a flat trajectory; defined as a two-stage rocket, it employed booster rockets that, when about to burn out of use, ignited a swarm of smaller rocket arrows fired from the front end of the missile shaped as a dragon's mouth.