During a visit to an exhibition on the history of Chinese technology, I learned of the existence of the very first tester. Two centuries after the birth of Christ, Chinese farmers had developed a hand-operated mill to separate chaff from grain. enough, this equipment was not introduced into Europe for more than 16 centuries! There could be several reasons for this. Perhaps the agricultural industry in Europe was not sufficiently developed to require the equipment, or perhaps the ubiquitous "not invented here" syndrome was already hampering the progress of technological change. More likely, however, is that there was no communication on the development and transfer of technology between workers within the same industry - in this case, between Chinese and Europeans.