The origin and history of valves

When it comes to valves, many people are probablyfamiliar with them. Indeed, valves touch our daily lives in countless ways.Every time we turn on a faucet to get a drink or open a fire hydrant toirrigate farmland, we interact with valves. Behind the complex networks ofpipelines, various valves stand guard, ensuring smooth operation. The evolutionof valves is closely tied to the advancement of industrial production.

In ancient times, people used large stones or treetrunks to control or redirect the flow of rivers and streams. As early as thelate Warring States period, Li Bing, the governor of Shu Prefecture in theState of Qin, dug brine wells on the Chengdu Plain. To extract brine, they usedslender bamboo tubes as suction cylinders. A leather flap valve—operating as acheck valve—was installed at the bottom of the tube to open and closeautomatically, preventing leakage. A single tube could draw several dou (anancient Chinese unit) of brine. A large wooden frame erected above the wellused windlasses and capstans to lift the brine to the surface. The bamboocylinder had a wooden plunger valve inserted at one end to prevent leakage,allowing it to be lowered into the well to draw brine for salt production.Weren’t the ancients incredibly ingenious?

Ancient Egyptian and Greek civilizations alsodeveloped primitive types of valves for agricultural irrigation. However, it iswidely acknowledged that the ancient Romans created a relatively sophisticatedwater supply system for crop irrigation, employing plug valves and pistonvalves, as well as check valves to prevent backflow.

During the Renaissance, the artist and inventorLeonardo da Vinci incorporated valves into his designs for canals, irrigationsystems, and other large-scale hydraulic projects. Many of his technicalconcepts are still in practical use today. You might have previously known DaVinci only as a great painter, but did you realize he also made significantcontributions to valve technology?

Later, with advancements in metallurgy and hydraulicmachinery in Europe, demands for more reliable valves increased. This led tothe creation of copper and aluminum plug valves, marking the transition ofvalves into the era of metal construction.

The modern history of the valve industryhas evolved alongside the Industrial Revolution, advancing as the revolutiondeepened. In 1705, Newcomen invented the first industrial steam engine, whichintroduced the need to control steam engine operations. In 1769, Watt improvedthe steam engine, officially ushering valves into the field of mechanicalindustry. Many types of valves—such as plug valves, safety valves, checkvalves, and butterfly valves—were widely adopted on steam engines. Watt’sinvention marked the beginning of large-scale valve applications.

From the 18th to the 19th century, therapid expansion of steam engines across industries such as mining, metallurgy,textiles, and machinery manufacturing led to increasing demands for both thequantity and quality of valves, resulting in the emergence of slide valves.Watt also invented the first speed governor, after which the control of fluidflow gradually gained greater attention. Subsequently, the appearance of thescrew-stemmed globe valve and the wedge-type gate valve with trapezoidalthreaded stem represented a major breakthrough in valve development. Theintroduction of these two valve types not only met the growing pressure andtemperature requirements across industries at the time, but also began tosatisfy the need for flow regulation.

Theoretically, the first true valve inhistory should be the ball valve or spherical plug valve, with designstraceable to the work of John Wallen and John Charpmen in the 19thcentury—although they were not put into production at the time. After World WarII, valve development was driven by government initiatives; the U.S. Navy wasan early advocate of James Bury's valves for use in submarines. As a result, aseries of new research, trials, and innovations in valve technology emergedaround specific application scenarios, with valve technology undergoingsignificant advancements amidst the demands of wartime.

Due to the need for post-war reconstructionin many countries, coupled with the development of various specialmaterials—such as polymeric materials, smooth materials, stainless steel, andcobalt-based hard alloys—outdated plug valves and butterfly valves foundrenewed applications. Ball valves and diaphragm valves, evolved from plugvalves, rapidly developed during this period. Globe valves, gate valves, andother valve types increased in variety and improved in quality, graduallyestablishing the valve manufacturing industry as an important sector within themechanical industry.

During the 1960s, developed industrializednations successively entered periods of economic prosperity. Products fromformer West Germany, Japan, Italy, France, and the United Kingdom were eager toenter the international market, and valve exports were driven by the export ofcomplete sets of mechanical equipment.

From the late 1960s to the early 1980s,former colonial countries gained independence one after another, urgentlyseeking to develop national industries and importing large quantities ofequipment—including valves—while oil-producing countries heavily invested inthe high-profit oil industry due to the oil crisis. These factors collectivelybrought about a period of rapid growth in international valve production,trade, and development, further propelling the advancement of the valveindustry.

China's valve manufacturing industry startedrelatively late. In the 1960s, efforts began to develop products such assingle-seat and double-seat valves, primarily through imitation of formerSoviet Union designs. Due to backward machinery industry and low machiningprecision, these products suffered from high leakage rates, yet were stillsufficient for the general control requirements of industrial processes at thattime.

Starting in the 1970s, as industrialproduction scales expanded and process control requirements increased, someexisting control valves no longer met the needs—such as control under highpressure, high pressure drop, cryogenic or high-temperature conditions, andcorrosive media. To address this, large petrochemical enterprises beganimporting not only equipment but also advanced control valves, includingbalanced-core cage valves and eccentric rotary valves, which provided cleardevelopment directions for domestic manufacturers. As a result, by the late1970s, several valve manufacturers had already started to replicate productslike the eccentric rotary valve.

Starting from the 1980s, with theimplementation of China's reform and opening-up policy, key enterprises wereorganized to introduce advanced technologies and machining equipment fromforeign counterparts in valve design and manufacturing processes. Thissignificantly accelerated the advancement of China's valve manufacturingtechnology and product quality. For instance, various types of cage valves andeccentric rotary valves were developed, and research began on compact controlvalves. Concurrently, with the progress of large-scale industrial projects suchas power stations, different types of actuators—including electro-hydraulic andlong-stroke actuators—were developed to meet control requirements involvinghigh thrust, high torque, and extended travel. In the 1990s, following theintroduction and absorption of foreign advanced technologies, China's controlvalve industry began to grow rapidly, filling gaps in special industrialcontrols and elevating the overall industrial standard, thus narrowing the gapwith international levels. Currently, leading domestic valve manufacturers arecapable of designing and producing various valves in accordance withinternational standards such as ISO, DIN (German), and AWWA (American). Somemanufacturers' products have reached internationally advanced levels.