A Study On The Metrology Knowledge In Wu Jing Zong Yao

Military affairs played a very important role in the social activities of ancient China. As a result,lots of military books were compiled at that time. Since metrology is the technical support of military actions, these books contained huge amount of related information. Therefore, the research in these knowledge is an essential part in the study of metrology history. This thesis is as a study on Wu Jing Zong Yao, the first Chinese ancient military book compiled by the courts, focusing on three respects: measurement, time and orientation measurement.In the part of measurement, I discovered and made corrections on——6 feet are equal to 1 step, 360 feet are equal to 1 mile, which is different from any official system that ever used. All these provide references to depth study of this book and other related ones. In the section of time measurement, I made further researches in the method and features of keeping time in this book on the basis of former researches. Meanwhile, I also studied related documents in the military guiding books of Ming Dynasty to make a more comprehensive explanation of metrology knowledge in this book. These documents made up for the deficiencies and added new explanations in former researches. Moreover, I also studied and summarized the keeping time equipments in the army. In position measurement, I amplified the way of displaying and distinguishing positions in the army, some of which were new discoveries in the history of metrology.