Zou Boqi

Zou Boqi

Zou Boqi (August 5, 1819-1869) was born in Bichong, Dali Town, Nanhai County, Guangzhou Prefecture, Guangdong Province (now Nanhai District, Foshan City). Physicists, scholars and pioneers of modern Chinese Science in Qing Dynasty.

Zou Boqi began to study optics when he was 17 years old. By 1844, Zou Boqi had been known as the "father of Chinese cameras". He also made telescopes, microscopes, seven political instruments, etc., and was the first person to study Mohism in modern times.

Most of Zou Boqi's manuscripts and self-made instruments were left to later generations. Zou Boqi wrote many works in his life, but most of them were unfinished. After his death, Chen Li, a scholar, selected some of his manuscripts and published them together with Zou Zhengjun's manuscripts under the title of Zou Zhengjun's manuscripts.

Life of the characters

In 1819, Zou Boqi was born in a teaching family in Bichong, Nanhai. Both his father and grandfather were "mathematics enthusiasts" with profound knowledge, which gave him a rare mathematical enlightenment education at that time. When he was 10 years old, he was received by his grandfather, a famous poet of Nanhai scholars, and taught him Zhouyi and Jiuzhang arithmetic, which laid the seeds of interest for Zou Boqi to study western culture and scientific knowledge in the future. Later, Zou Boqi once worshipped Liang Xuyong, who was fond of arithmetic, as a teacher. While he was teaching Confucian classics, he followed Liang Xuyong to learn a lot of ancient mathematics. In 1835, Zou Boqi, 17 years old, began to take an interest in the study of lens imaging because he read the tower reflection and yangsui reflection in MengXiBiTan. After discovering the arithmetic errors in ancient "Yishu of Zhujing", he began to study mathematics assiduously, and the familiar shadow of Huguang pagoda made him plunge into the study of optics. In 1844, Zou Boqi invented and made China's first camera. The photographic mapping method is designed. He also wrote an explanation of the Du Suan edition to explain the principle and usage of the Du Suan edition. In 1845, Zou Boqi's the instrument of photography became one of the earliest photographic documents in the world. In the third year of Xianfeng (1853), he designed and manufactured the "logarithmic ruler", which has many functions. In addition to the general calculation, it can also be used for the calculation of Qi, astronomy, volume and so on. In the seventh year of Xianfeng (1857), Zou Boqi was the head of xuehaitang. He had a close relationship with Chen Li, the master of Confucian classics. Chen often asked Zou Boqi to solve his academic problems. In the third year of tongzhi (1864), he carried out on-the-spot mapping with photographic mapping method. Guo Songtao recommended Zou Boqi to the imperial court, and Zou Boqi said he was ill and refused. When Zeng Guofan visited Liangjiang, he hoped that Zou Boqi would teach in the Academy set up by Shanghai Machinery Bureau, but he failed. In 1865, Guo tongtao, the governor of Guangdong Province, invited him to preside over the map of Guangdong coast. Zou changed his method of drawing circle from circle to ellipse. In his opinion, the radius of the earth's poles is smaller than that of the equator, and it is elliptical. When calculating, it should be "calculated by the curvature of the ellipse.". It makes the drawing technique more accurate. In 1869, he died of illness and was buried in his hometown, Bichong, Nanhai county.

Main achievements

Glass plate photography

Zou Boqi's camera is the camera. As long as there are photosensitive chemicals and photosensitive plates, photography can be successful. According to the research of scholars, Zou Boqi solved these problems. in a scattered article by Zou Boqi, the wet plate photography of camera and the operation process of wet plate photography are described. Zou Boqi also left a page of loose manuscript, describing the prescription of these compounds. In this formula, Zou Boqi was the first to name "nitric acid", "hydrochloric acid" and "acetic acid". This batch of medicinal materials can be purchased in Macao since the 1850s, but Zou Boqi mostly uses local raw materials. in the formula of medicine, egg glue is a very important chemical in glass photography, and its main component is egg white (i.e. protein). Dai Nianzu said that among them, "gas water" may be distilled water with alum added to purify water quality. Beat the egg white, a small amount of salt and purified water with chopsticks (stirring time should not be too short), scrape off the foam, beat again, beat the silk, and then pour it into the basin. After cleaning, pour it into a porcelain plate or glass plate for use. This egg white can be called a satisfactory silver salt carrier on glass or paper. One side of the glass plate or paper is carefully put into the porcelain plate containing egg white to make it uniformly adhere to the egg white, and then it is placed in the silver salt solution to make it uniformly adhere to the silver salt solution, so as to make the positive film of silver positive plate or paper (or film). Early glass plate photography was not successful because egg white glue and its patient and meticulous operation were not found. However, Zou Boqi has no detailed record of the quantity of each drug. Zou Boqi took many pictures with his homemade camera and photosensitive compound. One of the self portrait glass plates is in the Guangzhou Museum. In 1973, Dai Nianzu used this plate to develop a very clear picture of Zou Boqi. in 1839, Daguerre of France made the first practical silver plate camera, which is composed of two wooden boxes. One wooden box is inserted into another wooden box for focusing, and the lens cover is used as the shutter to control the exposure time of up to 30 minutes, which can take a clear image. Zou Boqi's invention of camera is not far from this. Some researchers point out that there is no evidence to prove that Zou Boqi's camera was invented by Daguerre, so it is very likely that he invented the camera independently.

Mapping

Another breakthrough achievement of Zou Boqi is to apply his research results to map drawing. In the aspect of map drawing, the drawing of longitude and latitude was a difficult problem at that time. Although the theory of sphericity of the earth was widely accepted in the west at the end of the 15th century, it was more than 200 years later in the Qing Dynasty to hear this information than in the West. At that time, there were even overwhelming voices against the theory of sphericity. However, Zou Boqi, who was already a pioneer of science at that time, readily accepted this theory and quickly carried out research. Zou Boqi believes that "the half degree tangent method is not consistent with real numbers because it is dense inside and sparse outside.". He developed the drawing method of using curves to represent longitude and latitude lines, because the earth is round, "if you draw a circle with a circle, its shape is Xiao". Zou Boqi found a way to express longitude and latitude with curves, and began to design and use photography to draw maps. His photography opened a dusty door for the field measurement and survey of surface geology in ancient China, and he also became a scientific pioneer of modern map drawing. He used his own method to redraw the most authoritative map of the whole country at that time, Huangxing complete map (a total of 66), which became the most "Luoyang paper expensive" map at that time. In addition, he led his disciples to draw maps of his hometown, such as the map of Guangdong Province, the map of Nanhai County, and the map of xungong Prefecture. Zou Boqi was inspired by the geometric principle of "height measurement with flat mirror" in the surveying works introduced into China by Jesuits, and immediately used the landscape painters for mapping and plane surveying. "The instrument of photography" also left a very specific explanation on the drawing and measurement methods. At the same time, Zou Boqi also knew clearly that the paper must be on the focal plane of the objective lens. Therefore, the objects or regions to be painted should not be too scattered, and the distance between them should not be too large. Only in this way can the painting be "no less different from the scenery in front of us". The xungangzhou map and the complete picture of sangyuanwei, etc. which were drawn by Zou Boqi's disciples, were all mapped by this photographic method. This photography and mapping opened the door for modern aerial mapping and surface geological survey.

Other areas

in physics, he has written three volumes of "Qing Qiu Zhong Xin Shu", "Qiu Zhong Shu shushuo", "Ge Shu bu", which respectively discuss mechanical and optical problems; in mathematics, he has written three volumes of "Cheng Fang Jie Shu", the first volume talks about power and root, the second volume talks about logarithm, and the third volume is the application of power, root and logarithm; in astronomy, Zou Boqi has drawn a star map in the south of the equator《 Star map of the north of the equator, produced "celestial globe", "solar system performance instrument". In Zou Boqi's time, there was still controversy in Chinese academic circles about Copernicus's theory of the sun center. Zou Boqi's instruments, with the sun as the center, showed progressive astronomical ideas. He also used the astronomical theory to verify the correctness of the discussion on astronomical phenomena in ancient Chinese books, and wrote more than ten papers, such as the examination of the stars at the South Gate of Xia shaozheng, which is of great academic value. In terms of instrument production, he also developed "round level", "Mercury overflow level", "rain needle" (barometer and altimeter), etc. in geography, he took the lead in drawing maps of the whole country by using the method of longitude and latitude, and designated a meridian line passing through Beijing as the prime meridian.

Editing and printing works

Zou Boqi was "diligent in thinking but lazy in writing" all his life. He left a few books, and a large number of manuscripts were only for memorials, which was very unsystematic. Zou Boqi didn't have the means to write a book for himself when he was alive. It was only after his death that some of Zou Boqi's manuscripts were printed and circulated with the support of some scholars in Guangdong. Zou Boqi's posthumous works are mainly composed of Zou Zhengjun's posthumous letters and Zou Zhengjun's manuscripts, which are well-known after him. Among them, the most important one, Ge Shu Bu, was reprinted by Ding huozhong, a famous scholar and mathematician in Changsha, Hunan Province, invited Yin Jiaxing to supplement and annotate it. Finally, Wang Kaiyun, who knew Zou Boqi, funded the printing of Hunan baifutang edition, which is recognized as one of the representative works of Chinese science and technology in the late Qing Dynasty. His most influential is a short essay "the instrument of photography", which is the pioneering work of the word "photography" commonly used in China.

Anecdotes and allusions

Chinese PinYin : Zou Bo Qi