Inventors
Zhang Heng
78–139 · Astronomer and instrument maker
Eastern Han China
Zhang Heng mapped the sky, improved the armillary sphere, and described a seismoscope that pointed toward distant quakes. He is in this gallery because measurement is a technology: a palace that can feel the Earth moving is already a scientific instrument.
Why it mattered
- Treated the cosmos as something a machine could model.
- Showed that instruments belong in a history of technology, not only in a history of ideas.
