1620, when Francis Bacon wrote in his Instauratio magna that "printing, gunpowder, and the nautical compass . . . have altered the face and state of the world: first, in literary matters; second, in warfare; third, in navigation," this was hardly an original idea to most learned Europeans. In the 19th century, Karl Marx commented on the importance of gunpowder, the compass and printing, "Gunpowder, the compass, and the printing press were the three great inventions which ushered in bourgeois society. Gunpowder blew up the knightly class, the compass discovered the world market and found the colonies, and the printing press was the instrument of Protestantism and the regeneration of science in general; the most powerful lever for creating the intellectual prerequisites." Western writers and scholars from the 19th century onwards commonly attributed these inventions to China. The missionary and sinologist Joseph Edkins (1823–1905), comparing China with Japan, noted that for all of Japan's virtues, it did not make inventions as significant as paper-making, printing, the compass and gunpowder. Edkins' notes on these inventions were mentioned in an 1859 review in the journal Athenaeum, comparing the contemporary science and technology in China and Japan. Other examples include, in Johnson's New Universal Cyclopædia: A Scientific and Popular Treasury of Useful Knowledge in 1880, The Chautauquan in 1887, and by the sinologist, Berthold Laufer in 1915. None of these, however, referred to four inventions or called them "great." In the 20th century, this list was popularized and augmented by the noted British biochemist, historian, and sinologist Joseph Needham, who devoted the later part of his life to studying the science and civilization of ancient China. Recently, scholars have questioned the importance placed on the inventions of paper, printing, gunpowder, and the compass. Chinese scholars in particular question if too much emphasis is given to these inventions, over other significant Chinese inventions. They have pointed out that other inventions in China were perhaps more sophisticated and had a greater impact within China. In the chapter "Are the Four Major Inventions the Most Important?" of his book Ancient Chinese Inventions, Chinese historian Deng Yinke writes: Cultural influence In 2005, the Hong Kong postal service created a special stamp issue that featured the Four Great Inventions. The stamp series was first issued on August 18, 2005, during a ceremony where an enlarged first day cover was stamped. Allan Chiang (Postmaster General) and Prof. Chu Ching-wu