The term "four new inventions" harks back to the "four great inventions" of ancient China - papermaking, gunpowder, printing and the compass. China has been putting strong emphasis on ...

China's long history has seen some extremely important inventions emerge, most noticeably gunpowder, paper making, printing and the compass, which, in the words of Roger Bacon, changed the whole ...

Yates, Professor of History and East Asian Studies at ... NOVA: How did the Chinese invention of gunpowder move from East to West? Yates: Although scholars often consider the Song Dynasty to ...