An ancient Chinese urn could detect earthquakes from hundreds of miles away
In 132 AD, Chinese inventor Zhang Heng created a bronze vessel that could pinpoint the direction of distant earthquakes using an internal pendulum system.
Zhang Heng’s seismoscope, known as the Houfeng Didong Yi, was the world’s first instrument capable of detecting earthquakes from hundreds of miles away. The ornate bronze urn contained an inverted pendulum linked to eight mobile arms. When a tremor occurred, the pendulum’s inertia would trip a lever, causing a bronze ball to drop from a dragon's mouth into a waiting toad below, indicating the direction of the epicenter.
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