- Qiao Weiyue (Chiao Wei-Yo)
- SUBJECT AREA: Canals[br]fl. c. 980/987 China[br]Chinese canal engineer who constructed pound-lock gates on the Huai section of the Grand Canal.[br]Qiao held office as Assistant Transport Commissioner of Huainan c. 984. In the course of his duties he constructed true pound-lock gates on the Huai section of the Grand Canal as a means of preventing tax frauds on grain, which resulted from the frequent wrecking of grain-carrying boats on the canal's double slipways. The pound locks included suspended lock gates (portcullis gates), implying some mechanism for raising and lowering them. The locks were covered over by a shed-like roof and were large enough to accommodate several barges at a time. Qiao's pound locks were the first in any civilization: they probably resembled those illustrated in the work of the Italian writer Vittorio Zonca on machines of the seventeenth century.[br]Further ReadingJ.Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971, vol. IV.3, pp. 350–2, 357, 660(i).LRD
Biographical history of technology. - Taylor & Francis e-Librar. Lance Day and Ian McNeil. 2005.
