Papermaking (zàozhǐshù 造纸术) is one of the four great inventions in ancient China. Before papermaking technology was invented, the Chinese carved or wrote caharacters on totoise shells, animal bones, bamboo slices, wooden plates, and thin tough silk. Tortoise shells, animal bones and wooden plates were too heavy to use while silk was too expensive. In the early years of the Western Han Dynasty (xīhàn 西汉) (206 BC – 25AD), someone used hemp and ranie to produce the paper, which was very rough and not suitable for writing.

             
Compass (zhǐ nán zhēn 指南针) is one of the four great inventions of ancient China. It is a simple instrument for navigational instrument for determining direction relative to the Earth's magnetic poles. It consists of a magnetized pointer (usually marked on the North end) free to align itself with Earth's magnetic field.

   
As early as in Spring and Autumn Period (chūn qiū shí qī 春秋时期) and the Warring States Period (zhàn guó shí qī 战国时期), Chinese people had made great achievement in astronomy. Based on their long-time observation of the celestial phenomena, Gan De (gān dé 甘德) of the State of Qi (qí guó 齐国) wrote a work titled Astronomy and Astrology (tiān wén xīng zhàn 天文星占) in eight volumes, and Shi Shen (shí shēn 石申) of the State of Wei (wèi guó 魏国)wrote his Astronomy (tiān wén 天文), also in eight volumes. The later generations combined their books, naming it Gan and Shi’s Celestial Book (gān shí xīng jīng 甘石星经), which is the earliest astronomic work in the world.

Zu Chongzhi (zǔ chōng zhī 祖冲之) was a famous mathematician and scientist in ancient China. He lived in Southern and Northern dynasties (nán běi cháo 南北朝). When he was young, he had a broad range of interests, such as natural science and philosophy. And he was interested in mathematics, astronomy and machinery.

     
In ancient China, people calculated time according to the position of the sun, the moon and stars in the sky. However, such method was not very accurate. Afterwards, by watching the sun, someone designed a kind of time-counter to identify the time—the sundial (rì guǐ 日晷).

The first seismograph (dì dǒng yí 地动仪) of the world was invented by Zhang Heng (zhāng héng 张衡), a famous scientist in the Eastern Han Dynasty (dōng hàn 东汉, 25-220). Zhang Heng (78-139) was from Nanyang (nán yáng 南阳) in Henan Province (hé nán shěng 河南省). He studied diligently, and was especially keen on astronomy, calendars and mathematics. As a whole, Zhang Heng can be regarded as an erudite and talented scientist.