The Four Great Inventions of Ancient ChinaThe Four Great Inventions of ancient China are four inventions that are celebrated in Chinese culture for their historical significance and as signs ofancient China's advanced science and technology.

　　The Four GreatInventions are: The Compass,  Gun powder, Papermaking, Printing.

　　These four inventions had an enormous impact on the development of Chinese civilization and a far-ranging global impact. However, some modern Chinese scholars have pointed out that other inventions in China were perhaps more sophisticated and had a greater impact - the Four Great Inventions serve merely to highlight thetechnologicalinteraction between East and West.

　　Although Chinese culture is replete with lists of sign讯cant achievements (e.g. Four Great Beauties, Four Great Books of Song, Four Great Classical Novels, Five Classics, Five Elders), the concept of the Four Great Inventions originated with European scholars, and was only later adopted by the Chinese.

　　The importance of these inventions was perhaps first discussed by the British philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626), who in 1620 wrote: "Printing, gunpowder and the compass ... whence have followed innumerable changes, in so much that no empire, no sect, no star seems to have exerted greater power and infiuence in human affairs than these mechanical discoveries." Bacon was likely unaware of the origins of these inventions, and was not writing of the ancient Chinese inventions but rather their Western analogs. However, his writings do show the importance of these technologies to the early-modern European world.

　　Later, Karl Marx also commented, "Gunpowder, the compass, and the printing press were the three great inventions which ushered in bourgeois society. Gunpowder blew up the knight class, the compass discovered the world market and founded the colonies, and the printing press was the instrument of Protestantism and the regeneration of science in general; the most powerfullever for creating the intellectual prerequisites."The modern list of the Four Great Inventions originated in the 19th century with the missionary and Sinologist Joseph Edkins (1823-1905). Edkins, when comparing Japan with China, noted that scholars should bear in mind that the Japanese did not have inventions as significant as papermaking, printing, the compass and gunpowder. This list was later popularized and augmented by the noted British biochemist, historian, and Sinologist Joseph Needham, who devoted the later part of his life to studying the science and civilization of ancient China .

　　Compass:

　　The earliest reference to a magnetic device used as a "direction finder" is in a Song Dynasty book dated to AD 1040-44. Here there is a description of an iron "south-pointing fish" foating in a bowl of water, aligning itself to the south. The device is recommended as a means of orientation "in the obscurity of the night." However, the first suspended magnetic needle compass was written of by Shen Kuo in his book of AD 1088.

　　Gunpowder:

　　Fireworks were invented in ancient China in the 12th century to scare away evil spirits, as a natural extension of gunpowder of the Four Great Inventions of ancient China.

　　Papermaking

　　Papermaking has traditionally been traced to China about AD 105, when Cai Lun, anofficial attached to the Imperial court during the Han Dynasty (202 BC-AD 220), created a sheet of paper using mulberry and other bast fibres along with fishnets, old rags, and hemp waste However a recent archaeological discovery has been reported from near Dunhuang of paper with writing on it dating to 8 BC.

　　Printing:

　　The Chinese invention of Woodblock Printing, at some point before the first dated book in 868 (the Diamond Sutra), produced the world's first print culture. Western printing presses, although introduced in the 16th century, were not widely used in China until the 19th century. China, along with Korea,was one of the last countries to adopt them.