Pei Songzhi in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, who made a note on the Three Kingdoms, quoted a record about the wooden ox flowing horse in Zhuge Liangji, which is now lost, and described the image of the wooden ox and recorded some dimensions of the flowing horse. However, because there are no physical objects and figures left in later generations, the understanding of the wooden ox flowing horse is still rare.
It is said that 2 years after Zhuge Liang made the wooden ox and flowing horse, Zu Chongzhi, a scientific genius in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, made the wooden ox and flowing horse. "Biography of Zu Chongzhi in the Southern Qi Dynasty" said: "Zhuge Liang has a wooden ox and a flowing horse, which is to build a device, not because of Feng Shui, but because of the machine, it does not require manpower." It is hard to understand that he also left no detailed information.
However, the record of Zu Chongzhi's creation of Mu Niu Liu Ma provides evidence for the viewpoint of automatic machinery, which is a main viewpoint about Mu Niu Liu Ma. It is considered that it is common to use gears to make machinery in the Three Kingdoms period, and the Mu Niu Liu Ma, which is respected by later generations, should be an automatic machine made by using gear principle.
In Huangsha Town, Mianxian County, Hanzhong City, Shaanxi Province, historical records show that this is the place where Zhuge Liang made wooden cows and horses. According to textual research, Zhuge Liang used Mu Niu Liu Ma three times in the eight-year Northern Expedition. It was from here that Mu Niu Liu Ma walked 25 kilometers of plank road and reached the front line of Wuzhangyuan, Qishan.
The local old man described the legendary wooden ox and flowing horse to us: "The horse's head is made of wood, and other small pieces form the horse's body, and then the horse's legs are assembled, and a gear is installed in the middle of the belly. There is a wrench behind the Trojan horse. When operating, one step is pressed, and the other step is pressed." As can be seen from this legend, the wooden ox and the flowing horse have gears, and it seems that the lever principle is also used.
Not long ago, Liang Guojun, an ordinary rural teacher in Botou, Hebei Province, said that he had recovered the wooden ox and the flowing horse himself, and it was very successful. Our reporter made a special trip there with great interest.
The wooden cows and horses made by Liang Guojun are all wooden machines with four legs and hollow bellies, which can carry loads. Press and lift the horse's neck, and the flowing horse will walk with its legs open; The wooden cow walks by pressing the double shafts at the back. According to Liang Guojun, the wooden ox and flowing horse he made is consistent with the historical records in principle: "The wooden Niu Niu is like an elephant." There is a long labor-saving arm behind the wooden cow, which is a double shaft; The labor-saving arm of a flowing horse is its long horse neck, which is shaped like an elephant. More subtly, Liang Guojun immediately realized the function of secret lock in his stream. When he twisted his tongue, the horse's head was locked and he could not walk, which is very consistent with the description in The Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
However, the Muniu Liuma restored by Liang Guojun was opposed by another faction. Guo Qinghua, director of Mianxian Museum in Hanzhong City, Shaanxi Province and director of the Three Kingdoms Cultural Research Center in Shaanxi Province, thought that Muniu Liuma could not have four legs: "The plank road is paved with wooden boards, and the gap in the middle is different. How can four legs walk on the board with gaps?" Even if you walk on a non-plank road, it is also climbing, and you need to pull it in front and push it behind. You can't pull or push it with four legs. Therefore, the wooden cow must have wheels. "
why does Guo Qinghua think that wooden cows and flowing horses should have wheels? This can also be found in historical records. Guo Qinghua believes that the wooden ox Liuma should be a four-wheeled car: "In the method of making wooden ox Liuma, when introducing Liuma, it is said that Liuma has a front axle and a rear axle. Everyone knows that a wheel is a shaft, and a shaft is equipped with two wheels, so I think it should be four wheels. "
Is a wooden ox or a flowing horse with wheels or four legs? Chen Shidao in the Northern Song Dynasty has the following written record: "There is a small car in Shu, pushing eight stones alone, like a cow's head in front;" There is also a big cart, which is pushed by four people and carries ten stones. " There is also a record in the book "The Origin of Things" written by Gao Cheng in the Song Dynasty: "The wooden ox is the one who has the front shaft of the car today; The horse is the only pusher today. " Lin Qing, a Manchu water conservancy expert in the Qing Dynasty, also said that the earthen cart used in the water conservancy project at that time was a wooden ox and a flowing horse recorded by Chen Shidao: "The earthen cart, with a single wheel, is expected to fill the earth and carry barnyard grass. Zhuge Liang, the prime minister of Shu, went out to war and began to build a wooden ox and a flowing horse to transport his salary. Today's earth carts are pushed alone, and the legacy of Ge is still stored. " Mu Niu is a unicycle with a front shaft, and Liu Ma is a single-wheeled cart without a front shaft, which is also a main viewpoint about Mu Niu Liu Ma. But even the records of the Song Dynasty are more than 1 years from the Three Kingdoms period. How credible is this view?
Feng Lisheng, a professor at Tsinghua University Institute of Ancient Literature, believes that Mu Niu Liu Ma is basically a unicycle, because it is the most likely to be a unicycle based on various historical materials and documents.
in order to find out the situation of the plank road during the Three Kingdoms period, we came to the mouth of the Baohe Valley, which is the starting point of the Baoxie plank road, located 2 kilometers north of Hanzhong City. More than 1,7 years ago, Zhuge Liang's wooden cattle and horses set out from here to transport grain and grass to the front.
Unexpectedly, the ancient plank road was very gentle, not steep. It turns out that the ancient people were very clever in opening the ramp. They chose the slowest road in Qinling Mountain, climbed the mountain unconsciously, and then went down without any effort. On such a road, a four-legged machine is not as efficient as a wheel in any case, so it is unlikely that the wooden cow was a four-legged mobile machinery at that time, and the possibility of a four-wheeled vehicle is even smaller, because it is more difficult for a four-wheeled vehicle to be used as steering control, even on the flat ground, the four-wheeled vehicle is not very flexible in turning, so it is even less likely to be placed under that special condition.
From the analysis of the plank road, it seems that only unicycle is the most likely wooden cow in history. Some people may ask, if Mu Niu Liuma is a unicycle, it is recorded that Mu Niu has one foot and four feet. How can this quadruped be reflected in the unicycle? Also, how to explain the names of some parts, including hidden organs?
Recently, Kang Hong, a scholar studying in Australia, put forward a new explanation for Mu Niu Liu Ma. It is considered that Mu Niu Liu Ma is a winch cableway system driven by gear set. In the deep mountains of Yunnan-Guichuan, similar systems are still being used.
His research mainly solved the subject of "walking" in historical records. It is recorded in ancient books: "A wooden ox has a square belly and a bent head, with one foot and four feet ..... The special traveler is dozens of miles, and the group traveler is twenty miles." ..... People walk six feet, cattle walk four steps. Twenty miles a day, and people don't work hard. " Based on this description, the traditional view is that the wooden ox and horse should be a wooden ox and horse-like means of transportation. You can walk 2 miles a day. Because the level of science and technology two thousand years ago could not produce such a level of transportation, it is generally believed that this is just a legend. The reason for this misjudgment is the misunderstanding of whether the subject of traveling 2 miles a day is a person or a wooden cow. By linking "traveling 2 miles a day, but people don't work hard", we can clearly understand that "traveling 2 miles a day" is people-people pushing winches, and Mu Niu didn't go at all.
The new research first questions: Mu Niu Liu Ma is so easy to use, they should be vigorously promoted and circulated. However, Mu Niu Liu Ma was not only not popularized by the public, but even Zhuge Liang did not often use Mu Niu Liu Ma in all places at that time. This shows that the use of wooden cattle and flowing horses has considerable limitations. By analyzing Zhuge Liang's use of wooden cows and flowing horses, we can preliminarily conclude that this limitation is mainly manifested in the regional environment. Shu Han is located in today's Sichuan, and the roads are rugged, mostly winding mountain roads. It is far and difficult to take winding mountain roads between mountains that are not far away in a straight line, and it is undoubtedly a quick and convenient way to set up winches and ropeways. At present, the cableway in mountainous areas of Sichuan and Yunnan is still the main means of transportation, and the mountain people have to rely on it to go to the market. Winch ropeways cannot be widely used in other areas, so Muniu Liuma has not been popularized. Before leaving Qishan, Zhuge Liang had conquered Meng Huo in the south, and he should have heard about the ropeway widely used in Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. According to their functions, Muniu Liuma should be a winch and cableway with variable speed bevel gear set or worm and turbine drive. The winch needs to be stable. Therefore, it is made into a cow shape to show its firmness. The hanging bucket on the ropeway needs to be light and fast, so it is made into a horse shape to show its agility. It is also possible that Muniu is a heavy transport machine, which is a winch and a cableway, and Liuma is a light transport machine, which is a simple cableway. This kind of structure is only suitable for mountainous areas with inconvenient transportation, but not for transportation in plain areas, so it cannot be widely popularized.
according to the records in Zhuge Liang's Collection, the type of wooden ox is: "The wooden ox has a square belly and a bent head, with one foot and four feet, the head is in the middle, and the tongue is in the abdomen. Carry more and do less, so it should be useful, not small; The special traveler is dozens of miles, and the group traveler is twenty miles. The bender is a cow's head, the two are cow's feet, the horizontal one is a cow's collar, the turning one is full, the covering one is a cow's back, the square one is a cow's belly, the hanging one is a cow's tongue, the bender is a cow's help, the engraver is a cow's tooth, the upright one is a cow's horn, the thin one is a cow's martingale, and the photographer is a bull's whip shaft. Cattle raise their heads, walk six feet, and cattle walk four steps. Carrying one-year-old grain, traveling 2 miles a day, and people don't work hard. " According to this, the new research analyzes the structure of the wooden cow in the history books as follows: "square belly" is the frame of the winch, "curved head" refers to the shaft head at the upper end of the winch, "foot" refers to the movable device, "one foot" refers to the movable wheel body, "four feet" refers to the four columns of the winch, and "head man leads the center" means that there is a protective cover or ring outside the shaft head at the upper end to prevent sand from entering the shaft head. "The tongue is on the abdomen" means that the check key is in the frame. "Carrying more and traveling less" means that if you carry more, the speed will be slow (this is attached to the principle of force mechanics, and the force is inversely proportional to the distance under the same power). "It's advisable to make great use of it, not to make it small", because it is a big project to set up a winch cableway, so it must be made great use of, and it is not possible to set up a wooden cow cableway just to transport a little food. "The special traveler is dozens of miles, and the group traveler is twenty miles." Here, "special traveler" and "group traveler" refer to people pushing winches, not wooden cows and horses. "Special walker" refers to one person pushing. Because of the small thrust, it is necessary to increase the diameter of the driving wheel, thus increasing the distance (several tens of miles). Many pedestrians are strong, which can reduce the distance. Pay attention to "group walkers are twenty miles" and "people walk six feet, cattle walk four steps". It is consistent to carry one-year-old grain and travel 2 miles a day. This is the workload of the soldiers pushing the winch in one day. This also shows that Mu Niu may have used a set of bevel gears, similar to the gearbox of today's cars, which increases the distance when there are few people pushing, and decreases the distance when there are many people pushing. "The bender is a cow's head, and both are cow's feet" is a concave wheel, including a drum and two side baffles. This is the same as the existing winch. It can run in two directions, and the cableway runs along the concave wheel's upper and lower grooves. The horizontal one should be the upper shaft bearing bush and the shaft base, the rotating one should be the bevel gear set, the covering one should be the cow's back, the square one should be the cow's belly (bottom frame), and the hanging one should be the cow's tongue (Xiao Jian is drooping and depends on gravity) "The bender is an ox helper (it is a curved handle, similar to the handle of the current automobile gearbox)" and "the engraver is an ox tooth" (a toothed anti-retreat wheel matched with the ox tongue, and the ox tooth may also be a group of driving wheel conversion devices that turn the winch rotating horizontally into a vertical direction. "The upright person is the ox horn" may be a vertical pipe protruding from the back of the ox, for example, if it is hollow, it can be understood as a lubricating device for oiling, "the thin person is the ox martingale", "the photographer is the ox whip shaft", and the ox raises two shafts (two push rods of the winch are now cross-shaped), and the wooden ox may use two parallel push rods, or both ends of one push rod passing through the central shaft hole. Another possibility is that "the cow has two shafts on its back" means that the wooden cow has two shafts, which are used to fix the wooden cow to other fixtures, such as trees and stones. Today's winch is also used for fixing at two points.) The key is the sentence "A pedestrian walks six feet, and an ox walks four steps". In the past, researchers thought that "an ox walks" was an ox walking, but it was not. Its original intention is: the person pushing the winch walks six feet, and the shaft of the wooden cow turns four times. It is also possible that there are teeth on the wheel, like the toothed disc on a bicycle blocking the ropeway to prevent slipping. "People walk six feet, cows walk four steps" means that the person pushing the winch turns four teeth every six steps. "Carrying one-year-old grain" (15-2 kg), "traveling 2 miles a day" means that people pushing winches walk 2 miles a day, not wooden cows, so people don't have much effort.
To sum up, Muniu is a heavy-duty transportation tool, which is a combination of winch and cableway. Its core part is a group of bevel gear drives that turn the winch driven horizontally into vertical rotation. Cow's head, cow's foot, cow's collar, full foot, cow's tongue, cow's help, cow's teeth, cow's horn, ox's martingale, ox whip shaft and double shafts are all parts of a complete set of equipment for wooden cows from power to transmission, work, braking and lubrication. The cow's foot is the base, the cow's belly is the body, the cow's back is the hood, and food bags are hung on the ropeway for the height difference between the two mountains. In the novel, Sima Yi's wooden ox and flowing horse's tongue can't move after being turned over because the tongue is an anti-retreat device, and when the tongue is turned over to the other side along its axis, it becomes an anti-entry device. At this time, the winch can only be pushed in the reverse direction, but not in the forward direction. In fact, its function is: transport the goods here to another place, turn the ox tongue to the front, transport the goods there to here, and turn the ox tongue to the reverse. Because Sima Yi didn't know this function, the cow tongue couldn't be pushed after it was turned over.
it's easy to understand when you understand the wooden cow and the flowing horse. The introduction of Trojan horse in history books is actually a wooden box with grain hanging on a cableway. It can be understood as a set of ropeway devices that can slide from a height to the bottom by gravity under the condition of large height difference, and of course it can also be understood as a set of devices. Liuma is a grain loading tool matched with Muniu. Because it is more complicated to make wooden ox, the history books mainly introduce its parts structure, while flowing horse is simpler, so only its manufacturing dimensions are listed in detail.
According to the records of the Three Kingdoms, in the ninth year of (Jianxing), Liang returned to Qishan, transported grain with wooden oxen, and withdrew all his troops ... In the spring of the twelfth year, Liang learned that the masses left the oblique valley (another road) to transport horses, and according to the martial arts, Wu Zhangyuan and Sima Xuanwang were in Weinan. "We can understand that the previous route out of Qishan had a small gap between mountains, so we used wooden cows, and after three years, we went out of the inclined valley, and the gap between mountains was large, so we used flowing horses.
If Muniu Liuma can be regarded as a gear-driven winch cableway system, it will be another great invention of China. Two thousand years ago, China had a gear transmission device and a relatively complete transportation machinery system. (Sketched)
Mu Niu Liu Ma may break the conventional law:
As we all know, Mu Niu Liu Ma in The Romance of the Three Kingdoms has always been a mystery, and it has also fascinated countless people. At that time, the production conditions were simple, far less than modern ones, but the structure of "Mu Niu Liu Ma" seemed simple and feasible, and it was also in line with the situation at that time. If we had written "Mu Niu Liu Ma" at that time, we might have abandoned it as a myth a long time ago, but just because the book was written in line with the situation at that time, we had to