Abstract
The development of technology is tightly interlinked to the introduction of the weaving loom, and in particular with the complex pattern loom. Probably, the most important testimony of this link is provided by the Chinese character ji with its various meanings including intelligence, human excellence, crossbow-trigger and weaving loom. Furthermore, the technological principles behind the pattern loom have been the key-inspiration behind very important breakthrough technological inventions throughout human history as e.g. the French Jacquard loom, telegram, then computers. However, the archaeological evidence has been missing. A new exceptional Han dynasty burial in Laoguanshan, Chengdu, southwest China in 2013, has revealed four models of wooden pattern looms dating back to 2nd century BCE, resulting in the first evidence of the use of pattern loom in the world. Hence, these finds provide the earliest existent archaeological material which is technological speaking the point of departure for our present highly technological world. We have reconstructed the finds in order to identify the exact technological principles behind these pattern looms. Our results reveal that there are two systems for the movement of warp and weft resulting in a highly complex multi-shaft patterning principle with two different power transmission systems.
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Acknowledgments
This project is supported by the Compass Plan, State Administration of Cultural Heritage, 2014. This a joint project by more than seven institutes, and we should thank the following people who helped and contributed in various ways: Professor Ziqiang Wang and Professor Yang Zhou of China National Silk Museum who studied the archaeological loom models; Mr. Mingbin Li and Mr. Yang Li of Chengdu Museum who assisted authors in dimensional measurement of the archaeological loom models; Ms. Jialiang Lu of Zhejiang Sci-tech university and Dr. Le Wang of Donghua University who drew the images of reconstituted jin silks; Dr. Hui Liu of Institute for the History of Natural Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences who provided historical documents. We also would like to thank Dr. Karin Frei of National Museum of Denmark for giving valuable suggestion and editing the manuscript.
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Zhao, F. et al. (2016). Mechanism of Laoguanshan Pattern Looms from Late 2nd Century BCE, Chengdu, China. In: López-Cajún, C., Ceccarelli, M. (eds) Explorations in the History of Machines and Mechanisms. History of Mechanism and Machine Science, vol 32. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31184-5_19
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31184-5_19
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