Western-Styled Time-Measuring Instruments In The Ming And Qing Dynasties

From the late 16^th century, a lot of western-styled time-measuring instruments and their manufacture technology have been introduced to China by European missionaries and caused very profound impacts on the development of Chinese time-measuring instruments during Ming and Qing Dynasties. There is no doubt that a systematic study on the introduction and influence of these instruments and their making technology in China is a very important topic in the history of astronomy and the history of science and technology exchange between China and Europe, which has now only been fragmentally studied. This dissertation gives a systematic study on this theme and falls into six parts. The 1st part discusses the spread of the books on Western-styled sundials in Ming and Qing Dynasties. The second and third parts provide mathematical analyses on the manufacturing techniques of the Western-styled sundials and astrolabes as presented in related books appeared in the Ming and Qing period. The forth part discuss the manufacuring techniques of other types of western-styles time-measuring instruments. The fifth part discusses the spread of spherical geometry project knowledge in East Asia during Chinese Ming and Qing Dynasty. The last part draws conclusions on both the characteristics of the manufacturing techniques of Wester-styled time-measuring instruments and the reasons for their high popularity in the Ming-Qing period. Besides the systematization of knowledge, this paper also achieved some new progresses on a number of related issues, among which the most important ones can be summarized as follows:1. With the clue provided by Mr. Li Bing, we relocated and examined the rare manuscript Rigui tufa (日晷图法, the Drawings and Methods of Sundials) by Didace de Pantoja and Sun Yunhua, and compared it with other extant books on sundials from the Ming-qing period. We found that the manuscript contains basically the same contents as in both the first part of Lu Zhongyu' manuscript on sundials and Johann Adam Schall von Bell and Zhu Que' book under the same title, which in turn are both arguably originated from Didace de Pantoja and Sun Yunhua's work. Meanwhile, it is evident as well that Pantoja and Sun's work was a very important source for Xu Chaojun in his book with the same title. Through a critical study of texts, we also found that the manuscript Li fa qi cuoyao (《理法器撮要》, A Digest of Principles, Methods and Instruments) is not a work by Matteo Ricci as argued by some scholars, but a collection of notes taken from different books on traditional Chinese and new Western astronomy, mathematicas and instrumentation.2. Through detailed mathematical analyses, we found that, despite the designing...