Introduction of the Archimedean Screw Pump to East Asia during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

Abstract

: The Jesuits played an important role in the transmission of Western science and technology to China during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, though their impact on water technology has received scant attention thus far. As a case in point, Sabatino de Ursis, Society of Jesus 熊三拔 , in collaboration with the Chinese official Xu Guangqi 徐光啟 , published in 1612 Hydraulic Methods of the Far West ( Taixi shuifa 泰西水 法 ), the earliest book in China on Western water-lifting devices, which contained a detailed description of the Archimedean screw pump. While the impact of the Archimedean screw pump in China and Korea remained rather limited, the screw pump was used to drain water from gold mines in the Japanese Sado Island from as early as 1637. This fact became known in the West only in the very late 1800s when hand-colored picture scrolls about the Japanese gold mining process became available. These scrolls show various applications of Archimedean screw, which apparently were made according to the manufacturing instructions in Hydraulic Methods of the Far West .