Jang Yeong-sil

Statue of Jang Yeong-sil at Cheonan-Asan Railway Station in Asan
Korean spelling
Hangeul	장영실
Hanja	蔣 英 實
Revised Romanization	Jang Yeong-sil
McCune- Reischauer	Chang Yŏngsil
See also : Korean name

Notice board in the Science Garden in Busan , which was created in honor of Jang Yeong-sil

Sundial developed by Jang Yeong-sil

Jang Yeong-sil ( Korean 장영실 ; 蔣 英 實 ; * around 1380 in Gaeseong , Goryeo ; † after 1442 in Korea of the Joseon Dynasty ) was an inventor and chief engineer during the reign of King Sejong (1432-1438) at the beginning of the Joseon Dynasty ( 조선 왕조 ) (1392–1897) in Korea. Among other things, he developed five different astronomical instruments and ten different timepieces.

Life

Jang Yeong-sil was born in Gaeseong around 1380 as the son of Jang Seong-hwi ( 장성휘 ), a government minister at the end of the Goryeo Dynasty ( 고려 왕조 ). His ancestors came from the area around Suzhou and Hangzhou during the Yuan Dynasty ( Chinese  元朝 , Pinyin Yuáncháo , W.-G. Yüan Ch'ao ). When the rule of the Goryeo dynasty collapsed in 1392 and King Taejo ( 태조 ) founded the Joseon dynasty, Jang's father was executed because he still felt loyal to the old system and opposed the new king. As a result, the family was downgraded in their social status, his mother was sent as Gisaeng ( 기생 ) to Dongnae-gu ( 동래구 ) County in Gyeongsang-do ( 경상도 ) Province , where they did their service and Jang and his siblings as Slaves had to serve the government. It can be assumed that Jang was raised and educated in the Confucian language . He consequently worked as a craftsman, although the nature of his craft is not known. But as the naval headquarters, which was Dongnae in the southeast of the Korean peninsula at the time, skills in shipbuilding and weapon manufacture were particularly in demand.

Jang was extremely talented in his work, so that the county magistrate recommended him to the court of King Taejong ( 태종 ). After King Sejong ( 세종 ) ascended the throne, Jang was freed from his low social status and appointed head of the royal clothing bureau in 1423. A year later he traveled to Yanjing ( 燕京 ) (today's Beijing ) to be trained in astronomy by two court astronomers. Back at court he developed a version of the clock that was improved compared to the night watch Klepsydra ( water clock ) installed in 1398 and was then ordered to the royal military headquarters. In 1432, as part of a project for the royal observatory, he developed several astronomical instruments and a water clock that could announce the time fully automatically by striking bells without any further human intervention. In the ninth month of 1433 he renewed the palace's water clock, called Jagyeokgungnu ( 자격 궁루 ), and after King Sejong recognized the advantages over the previous version , he was appointed to the royal guard and entrusted with development tasks at the court.

In 1437 Jang learned new metalworking and processing techniques from a Chinese metallurgist and developed a new water clock with “heavenly sounds” for the palace. The Ongnu ( 옥루 ) (Jade-Klepsydra), also called Heumgyeonggangnu ( 欽敬 閣 漏 / 흠경각 루 ), was placed in the deferential worship pavilion in the palace in the first month of 1438. In the same year, Jang was promoted to overseer of copper and iron mining in the country.

When Jang was commissioned with the construction of a new royal sedan chair in 1442 and it was broken during a royal procession, he lost his position and was imprisoned. His further life found no echo in the records at court and so there are no records about his life after 1442 and about the place, time and circumstances of his death.

Honor

Since the 1960s, various studies have been carried out in England and Korea to reconstruct Jang's water clock. In 2004, Konkuk University in Korea took on a reconstruction project. This was completed in 2007 with the dimensions 6 m wide, 2 m deep and 5.7 m high and has been in daily service in the National Palace Museum of Korea since November 2007 .

literature

• Sang Hyuk Kim, Yong Sam Lee, Min Soo Lee : A Study on the Operation Mechanism of Ongnu, the Astronomical Clock in Sejong Era . In: Journal Astronomy and Space Science (JASS) . tape 28 (1) . The Korean Space Science Society , 2011, ISSN  2093-5587 , pp. 79–91 , doi : 10.5140 / JASS.2011.28.1.079 (English).
• Nam Moon-hyon : Inventor of the Striking Clepsydra during the Reign of King Sejong in Joseon . In: Explorations in the History of Machines and Mechanisms: Proceedings of HMM2012 . Springer , Dortrecht 2012, ISBN 978-94-007-4131-7 , p. 83-105 (English).
• Moon-hyon Nam : Jang Yeong-sil (Unknown) . In: Distinguished Figures in Mechanism and Machine Science: Their Contributions and Legacies . Part 3 . Springer , Dortrecht 2014, ISBN 978-94-017-8947-9 , pp. 87-113 , doi : 10.1007 / 978-94-017-8947-9 (English).

Web links

Commons : Jang Yeong-sil  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Nam : Inventor of the Striking Clepsydra ... . 2012, p.  83 .
2. ↑ ^{a b} Nam : Inventor of the Striking Clepsydra ... . 2012, p.  87 .
3. ↑ Nam : Jang Yeong-sil (Unknown) . 2014, p.  88 .
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Nam : Inventor of the Striking Clepsydra ... . 2012, p.  88 .
5. ↑ Kim, Lee, Lee : A Study on the Operation Mechanism of Ongnu ... . 2011, p.  89 .
6. ↑ Kim, Lee, Lee : A Study on the Operation Mechanism of Ongnu ... . 2011, p.  79 .
7. ↑ Nam : Inventor of the Striking Clepsydra ... . 2012, p.  91 .