The Pursuit of Power. Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000

Chinese Crossbow Manufacture

This woodcut from a seventeenth-century encyclopedia shows how the arc was
strengthened by lamination. In the figure below, the crossbow is shown with a
magazine holding ten arrows. Cocking the bow released an arrow from the maga­
zine, which then fell into shooting position. Details of the cocking and trigger
mechanism do not show clearly, though these were the parts requiring most exact skill
in manufacture.
Reproduced from Sung Ying-Hsing, T’ien-Kung K’ai-Wu. translated by E-tu Zen Sun and Shiou-
Chuan Sun (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1966), p. 266.