Su Song's astronomical clock tower

Period

1092

Map

Inventions map

Su Song, a scholar-official of the Northern Song dynasty, completed a water-driven astronomical clock tower about 12 m tall in the capital Kaifeng in 1092. An escapement kept its waterwheel turning at a steady rate, driving an armillary sphere and a celestial globe in step with the sky and sounding the hours, and it used an endless chain drive to transmit power. Su Song described the machine with detailed illustrations in his treatise Xin Yixiang Fayao.

Earlier and later events nearby

1. AD 629–645Xuanzang's journey to India
2. AD 960Founding of the Song dynasty
3. c. 1040Bi Sheng invents movable type
4. 1092Su Song's astronomical clock towerThis page
5. 1127Jingkang incident
6. 2019–2023COVID-19 pandemic

Who ruled this land

States that held this place in the historical borders data (Cliopatria). Years are approximate, as fine as the data's snapshots (every few years to a century). Tap to open the map for that year.