Francis Bacon said the three greatest inventions are paper and printing, gunpowder, and the magnetic compass.
All three were invented in China by the Chinese.
In the book The Genius of China (1986), Robert Temple postulated that more than half of the basic inventions and discoveries upon which the modern world rests may have originated in China.
This book examines 100 of them, each with a concise introduction and pictures.
If the Chinese were so advanced from antiquity to the Middle Ages, why did the Scientific Revolution happen only in Europe? Why did Imperial China stagnate?
LWH, 10 Nov 2025, 10 p.m.