We all know that there are four great inventions in ancient China, and these inventions have had a profound impact on modern civilization. Now, China has the “Four New Inventions”, all of which are closely related to modern life. These four new inventions refer to high-speed rail, scan code payment, shared bicycles and online shopping.
China’s four new inventions:
1. High Speed Rail
On October 1, 1964, the Tokaido Shinkansen was officially opened to traffic. The operating speed is up to 210 km/h. Therefore, the world’s first real high-speed railway was invented by Japan. This marks the arrival of a new era of high-speed railways in the world. As a pioneer of high-speed railways in the world, Japan has accumulated rich experience for other countries including China that have not yet developed or are developing high-speed railways, and has transferred some technologies to these countries for a fee to help them develop high-speed railways faster and more conveniently system. In March 2006, the CRH2A train, which was transformed from the E2 series 1000 station, was loaded from Kobe Port and departed for Qingdao, China, and some technologies were transferred to China, thus opening the era of high-speed rail in China.
2. Scan to pay
The mode of scanning code payment is based on the concept of mobile payment, and the first batch of payments completed by mobile devices occurred in Finland in 1997. Local Finnish media reported that Finn Telecom has launched a service to operate jukeboxes and drinks vending machines by dialing a payphone number, which allows Coca-Cola to be purchased at Helsinki Airport. The scanned two-dimensional code (QR code, also known as “quick response code”) was invented in 1994 by Japan’s DW company.
3. Bike sharing
As early as 1965, the municipal government of Amsterdam in the Netherlands put forward the “white plan”, according to which the government purchased 50 bicycles and painted them with white paint as marks and scattered them all over the city for people to use. This is the earliest bicycle in the world. It is an unmanned shared bicycle system, so shared bicycles were invented by the Netherlands. In 2007, France also had bicycle free travel, and only later did China become popular and innovative models developed and promoted overseas.
4. Online shopping
Online shopping belongs to the category of e-commerce. In 1979, the British Mike Aldrich (Michael Aldrich) invented the concept of online shopping. Using a technology called Videotex, Aldrich connected a regular TV via a phone line to a local retailer’s computer. By the 1990s, after Amazon and eBay launched their websites in 1995, e-commerce had become popular globally.