As one of the earliest countries to apply machinery, China boasts a lot of unique inventions like the compass vehicle, the seismograph, and the incense burner with their respective characteristics on using power and mechanical structural design.

  Metallurgy and the development of machinery

A 6,000-year-old stone axe

Ancient metallurgy in China attained very high achievements very early. The bronze ware during the Shang and Zhou dynasties (about 1600BC to 221BC) are characterized by their unique vigorous and firm style. A bronze sword unearthed in Northwest China's Gansu Province, one of the earliest bronze ware ever found in China, was produced at least 4,800 years ago.

Roughly processed primitive tools for scratching, hacking, smashing, and drilling first appeared in China 400,000 to 500,000 years ago. The use of grinding in making tools appeared 40,000 to 50,000 years ago, contributing to sharper blades of the stoneware. Besides, the blades of the stoneware from that time vary in shape from single and double blades to convex, concave, and round blades.

Bronze arrowhead

The earliest invention in machinery came about 28,000 years ago when the bow and arrow were invented. The potter's wheel was invented somewhere in the period between eight millennium BC and 2,800 BC. Farm tools appeared approximately from 6,000 BC to 5,000 BC. Besides the more familiar tools like the stone axe and stone sword, there were also the stone hoe, stone scoop, stone sickle, mussel shell sickle, bone sickle, and bone thresher. On the stone axe and stone sword, there were already intentionally grinded holes.

In the time prior to the Xia Dynasty (about 21st to 16th century BC) and during the Xia Dynasty, the wooden wheel without spoke and the one with spokes successively appeared. Delicately double-wheeled carts appeared during the Shang (about 16th century BC to 11th century BC) and West Zhou (about 1100-771BC) dynasties, while water vehicles like dugout canoe and rafts appeared even earlier.

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