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Gong Zhenlin
Qing county assistant in Zhejiang who during the Opium War built a treadle-driven paddle-wheel warship and devised iron moulds for casting cannon
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 Chang Xingren
Gong Zhenlin was a Qing official of the Daoguang reign who served as assistant magistrate of Jiaxing county in Zhejiang and was known for his skill in mathematics and in making weapons. Sent to the army camps around Ningbo during the Opium War, he saw British steamers driven by paddle wheels and set out to copy them using human power instead; a small model tried on a lake proved fast, and the Zhejiang governor Liu Yunke had him build a full-size vessel, finished in little more than a month. In the summer of 1841 he also ran the gun foundry at Zhenhai, and after Zhenhai fell that autumn he was put in charge of a new cannon works at the provincial capital. Clay moulds took weeks to make and broke after one casting, so he devised reusable iron moulds instead. His account of the method, an illustrated treatise on iron cannon moulds, was included by Wei Yuan in the Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms (Haiguo tuzhi).
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; active in the 1840s