Jacket for 'The Genius of China'

Publishers

UK - Prion

The Genius of China

By Robert Temple

Published Jan 2010

The Genius of China is a doorway into three millennia of invention in science and technology from agriculture to astronomy, medicine to mathematics, exploration to engineering. Many of the key technologies of our modern world were pioneered and first put to use in ancient and medieval China before being brought to the West: the blast furnace, the compass, gunpowder, the spinning wheel, paper money, the fishing reel, the stirrup, the parachute, playing cards, the decimal system and the seismograph to name but a few. Lucid and entertaining, the book is studded with fascinating archive pictures and quotations from contemporary Chinese observers.