Answer:
The Tang dynasty (618–907) of ancient China witnessed many advancements in Chinese science and technology, with various developments in woodblock printing, timekeeping, mechanical engineering, medicine, and structural engineering.
Contents
1 Woodblock printing
1.1 Playing cards
2 Clockworks and timekeeping
3 Mechanical delights and automatons
4 Medicine
5 Structural engineering
6 Cartography
7 Alchemy, gas cylinders, and air conditioning
8 Citations
9 Sources
Woodblock printing
The Diamond Sutra, printed in 868, is the world's first widely printed book (using woodblock printing).
The popularization of woodblock printing during the Tang dynasty made the written word available to greater audiences. As a result of the much wider distribution and circulation of reading materials, the general populace were for the first time able to purchase affordable copies of texts, which correspondingly led to greater literacy.[1] While the immediate effects of woodblock printing did not create a drastic change in Chinese society, in the long term, the accumulated effects of increased literacy enlarged the talent pool to encompass civilians of broader social-economic circumstances and backgrounds, who would be seen entering the imperial examinations and passing them by the later Song dynasty.[2][3][4] The extent of woodblock printing is attested to by one of the world's oldest surviving printed documents, a miniature Buddhist dharani sutra unearthed at Xi'an in 1974, dating roughly from 650 to 670.[5] A copy of the Diamond Sutra found at Dunhuang is the earliest surviving full-length book printed at regular size, complete with illustrations embedded within the text and dated precisely to 868.[6][7] Among the earliest documents to be printed were Buddhist texts as well as calendars, the latter essential for calculating and marking which days were auspicious and which days were not.[8] The commercial success and profitability of woodblock printing was attested to by one British observer at the end of the nineteenth century, who noted that even before the arrival of western printing methods, the price of books and printed materials in China had already reached an astoundingly low price compared to what could be found in his home country. Of this, he said:
(1986)
Culture
Step-by-step explanation: