Chain pump

[9] Unlike those found in the West, chain pumps in China resembled the square-pallet type instead of the pear-shaped bucket[dubious – discuss].

The infamous Eastern Han court eunuch Zhang Rang (d. A.D. 189) once ordered the engineer Bi Lan (畢嵐) to construct a series of square-pallet chain pumps outside the capital city Luoyang.

[14] Ma Jun, the renowned mechanical engineer of the Three Kingdoms era, also constructed a series of chain pumps for watering the palatial gardens of Emperor Ming of Wei (226–239).

[15] During the period of agricultural expansion in Song China (10th–13th centuries CE), the technology of water-rising devices was improved.

A more complicated design, the 'square-pallet chain pump', was introduced several centuries before the growth in Song technology, but had not seen prior use for farming.

In Song Yingxing's (1587–1666) encyclopedic book the Tiangong Kaiwu (1637), there is description and illustration of a cylinder chain pump, powered by waterwheels and leading water up from the river to an elevated plain of agricultural crops.

[18] The contribution of chain pumps to agricultural growth during the Song was extolled by poets such as Li Chuquan (李处权) of the twelfth century.