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Bo Jue
Late Ming student from Changzhou in Suzhou who cast bronze cannon fitted with telescopes for Governor Zhang Guowei and made small armillary spheres and other instruments
In a workshop, a craftsman at a wooden vat lifts a bamboo-framed sheet from the pulp beside stacks of white paper and a tub of pulp, while others hang sheets to dry and work at a long table of carved printing blocks, and a water wheel turns outside the window.
Also known as Zi Zijue
Bo Jue, courtesy name Zijue, came from Changzhou county in Suzhou and remained a government student all his life without holding office. Skilled in calendrical mathematics and in making instruments, he was asked, according to Zou Yi's Unofficial Records of the Tianqi and Chongzhen Reigns (Qizhen yesheng) and later Suzhou gazetteers, to cast bronze cannon for Governor Zhang Guowei when roving rebels threatened Anqing in 1635; the guns carried telescopes for judging the enemy's distance before firing. He also built an armillary sphere less than a foot round marked with the constellations, as well as sundials, water clocks and waterwheels. Zhang recommended him to the court without result. After the fall of the Ming he died in poverty and could be buried only with his friends' help. He knew Huang Zongxi and Wei Xuelian, and wrote an illustrated account of the armillary sphere and other works, most of them now lost.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; late Ming