Produced by Zhonghua Book Company-Dream Stream Essays

Twenty-six volumes of Dream Stream Essays, three volumes of Supplementary, 11 pieces of Continued Essay. There are 609 articles in the whole book, with appendices, including past dynasties'' commentaries, inscriptions, postscripts, and descriptions, attached is the Index of Names and Shen Kuo''s Journeys. This book was written by Shen Kuo in the Northern Song Dynasty and proofread by Jin Liangnian. Shen Kuo (1031-1095), a native of Hangzhou Qiantang, a scholar in the eighth year of Jiayou, is one of the most knowledgeable scholars in the Song Dynasty, especially good at anecdotes, astronomy, algorithms, clock rules, etc., praised by the British scientist Joseph Needham as 'the most outstanding figure in the entire history of science in China'. Dream Stream Essays is a comprehensive academic notebook work, which records a lot of knowledge, such as anecdotes, music, astronomy, calendar, acoustics, metallurgy, weapons, and architecture. For the first time, movable type printing, one of the four great inventions of our country, was recorded in detail in Volume 18 Techniques of Dream Stream Essays. The term 'petroleum' was also first seen in the twenty-fourth Miscellaneous of this volume. Shen Kuo also predicted that oil 'will flourish in the future', and the same volume also records various methods of making compasses. Therefore, Dream Stream Essays is hailed as 'the coordinate in the history of Chinese science'.