Some Properties of ENGINEERING as Exemplified by the Construction of Instruments for the Beijing Observatory
In the 17th century, Jesuit missionaries came to China, and transmitted scientific knowledge to as-sist their missionary work. They contributed a lot to calendar-making in Ming Dynasty and Qing Dynasty, and in-troduced European astronomical instrument technology into China. In order to meet the urgent needs of calen-dar-making, Ferdinand Verbiest, a Jesuit, and his Chinese co-workers constructed an equatorial armillary sphere, an ecliptic armillary sphere, an azimuthal instrument, a quadrant, a sextant and a stellar globe during the period from 1669 to 1674, which equipped the Beijing Observatory and made the Observatory reconstructed. The plan-ning, design, manufacturing and usage of these instruments exemplified some properties of ENGINEERING as follows:it is led by social needs;it should systematically be planned;it pursues high success rate and makes use of reliable technologies;engineering innovation is based on the efficient integration of different technologies;an en-gineering team consists of different actors, such as engineers, craftsmen and managers;modern engineering means the integration and application of technologies, sciences and management knowledge to humankind’s practices in large-scale engineering.
国家科技期刊平台
NSTL
万方数据
维普
