Paper money and tooth brushes

By BETTY GABRIEL WAKIA - The National

WITH the invention of paper and printing on its account, China was almost destined to produce the first paper money.
The first paper money was invented in the ninth century and was made by the Tang Dynasty so that wealthy merchants would not have to carry large amounts of heavy copper coins.
It was called ‘flying money’ in those time because it was so light it could blow out of one’s hand. The paper money was made as an offshoot of the invention of block printing. The first paper money was a draft rather than real money. Original paper money like the today’s deposit receipts with the amount of total money available to the merchant written on them.
During that time, in order for merchant to exchange for cash in the provinces they deposit their cash in the capital and received a paper certificate called an exchange certificate. In this way paper money was quickly adopted by the government for forwarding tax payments. The first people to use a checking system were Muslim bankers in the 1200s, followed by Italian bankers in the 1400s.
The first Western money was issued in Sweden in 1661 followed by America in 1690, France in 1720, England in 1797, and Germany in 1806. The paper money is seen as the most common form of currency around the world today.

One of the greatest Chinese inventions of the medieval world was the mechanical clock. It was invented by the Buddhist monk, court astronomer, mathematician and engineer Yi Xing in 725 AD during the Tang Dynasty. Xing called it “Water Driven Spherical Birds Eye View Map of The Heavens” to keep track of celestial activity but unfortunately lasted only a few years before the water in the mechanism caused the metal to corrode. Without causing metal to corrode, later clocks used mercury with iron and bronze mechanisms. Hundreds of years later, an astronomer and mechanist of the Song Dynasty Su Song developed a more sophisticated clock called the Cosmic Empire in 1092. The first mechanical clock was developed in Europe two centuries earlier, but they did not have the escapement mechanism that is characteristic of mechanical clocks.
The compass was probably invented in between 221 BC and 206 BC during the Qin Dynasty by Chinese fortune-tellers who used lodestones to construct their fortune telling boards. During the Han Dynasty, they used this knowledge to create a direction finder device which resembles a spoon and when it is placed on a plate on the ground, the handle points to the south. It was first used in determining direction for the layout of buildings.
During the Song Dynasty, they come up with magnetised needles replacing the loadstone and it became very important to map makers and for the navigational devices on ships. The first person recorded as using a compass for navigation was Zheng He from Yunnan Province, who made seven ocean voyages between 1405 and 1433.
Around 960AD, Arab traders sailing to China probably learned of the Chinese method of sailing by compass and returned to Europe with the invention in 1127. Before those times, the compass had opened up the oceans for exploration and led to the discovery of the New World by using the sun, moon and the pole star to give a constant bearing and made navigation safer.
The world’s first toothbrush is thought to have been created in China. For thousands of years ago, Chinese found different tools to keep their gums and teeth clean, their teeth white and their breath fresh. They came up with water and rough cloth to clean their teeth and also rubbed things like chalk and salt across their teeth to try to get rid of grime. For mouth freshener, they used chewing twigs culled from aromatic trees and also sharpened at one end to use as a toothpick.
However, in 1498, the Chinese invented the bristle toothbrush, similar to the type used today. The bristles toothbrush was invented during the Tang Dynasty and was most likely made from coarse hairs taken from the back of a hog’s neck and attached to handles made of bone or bamboo. The first people to use the instrument to clean the teeth were Northern Chinese monks. The use of tooth brushes then spread to Europe by travelers and was adopted in Europe during the 17th century.
The Chinese-invented toothbrush might not be as interesting as paper or gunpowder but it is something that everybody uses every single day.

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