A History of Sailing Boat and A History of Steamboat Authored by Academician Yan You Published A History of Sailing Boat and A History of Steamboat, two books authored by Professor Yan You, an academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences and a famous expert on the design and construction of naval architecture and ocean structure and a historian of science and technology, were published by Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press. These two books are part of the series of books intended to publicize science and have a pretty high value in science. Professor Yan You has been devoted to the manufacturing, education and research of naval architecture and held a long-term position of the deputy director of China Society of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering and China Society of Ocean Engineering. Since the year 1962, he has been dedicated to the research on the history of naval architecture in China and the world with a series of papers like the Brief History of the Development of the Naval Architecture in China. In these newly published books, Professor Yan provided a vivid picture of the characteristics and the development history of the sailing boats and steamboats in China and the world with concise words and a large number of pictures. By comparison with the books of this kind in China, this series of books place an emphasis on the development history of the naval architecture and ocean engineering in the eastern countries. The Silk Road on the Sea, the Western Voyage of Zheng He (a great Chinese ocean explorer in the Ming Dynasty) and the South Island dialect speakers’ naval achievements are all introduced in the books with the false information removed from the skeptical events in the history, which reflects an old scientist’s spirit of seeking truth in scientific research.
