Page 33 - BBC History The Story of Science & Technology - 2017 UK

Stages of the paper-
making process first
standardised in China

W ARABIC
ALGORITHMS

Medieval Persia was the cradle
of the computer revolution

How does Google search the entire internet
in less than a second? To find out, we need
to travel back to medieval Persia. Born c780
AD, Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi was
an incredibly gifted mathematician. He
invented many of the principles fundamental
to computer science today. Google relies on
complex searching strategies to compare
your search terms against millions of
websites. These searching strategies are
known as algorithms, and are named after
al-Khwarizmi. (Algorithm is from the
medieval Latin algorismus, a mangled
CHINESE PAPER transliteration of al-Khwarizmi’s name.)
This wasn’t al-Khwarizmi’s only contribu-
W
A eunuch brought the benefits of paper to China, tion to science and mathematics. He also
but it took centuries for the world to catch up invented a system of notation for balancing
mathematical equations. Today we call this
This special edition you’re reading animal skins. And the clay tablets algebra, from the Arabic word meaning ‘the
relies on an ancient Chinese used in ancient Babylon were both reunion of broken parts’. In fact, you might
technology: paper. It might sound a difficult to store and easy to break. have noticed that lots of scientific terms start
bit mundane, but the invention of Paper solved all of these problems. with ‘al’. As well as algorithm and algebra
paper really did change the world. It was strong and durable, easy to we’ve got alkali and alchemy. Well, ‘al’ is the
Before that, human societies had store in a library and, most impor- Arabic definite article – the equivalent of the
been writing on papyrus, parchment tantly, it could be printed on. English word ‘the’. The Middle East was
and clay tablets. These all had their The oldest surviving fragments of really at the heart of science in the medieval
drawbacks. The papyrus used in paper date to the second century period. It was through translations of
ancient Egypt was relatively cheap BC. But Chinese papermaking really scholars working in Arabic that Europeans
but tended to rot. The parchment took off in the second century AD, learned new ways of doing mathematics,
used in Rome was strong but when the Chinese eunuch Cai Lun chemistry and astronomy.
expensive as it was made from presented a sample of paper to the
Han emperor. The emperor was so
The emperor was impressed that he made Cai Lun
swear to keep paper a secret. For
so impressed that centuries, Europeans tried to learn
AKG IMAGES/DREAMSTIME he made Cai Lun interrogating paper manufacturers. ‘Algorithm’ comes from ninth-century
how to make paper. Some even
resorted to kidnapping and
And so, while it might seem
swear to keep
unremarkable today, paper was a
Chinese invention that people
paper a secret
fought over and even died for.
The Story of Science & Technology mathematical genius al-Khwarizmi 33