Valves first originated in China, and appeared more than 2,000 AD. During the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Period, the people of Shu (in present-day Sichuan) installed a wooden plunger valve at one end of empty bamboo barrels to prevent leakage, and then put bamboo into wells to draw brine to make salt. In 1800 BC, the ancient Egyptians built large-scale water conservancy projects to prevent the Nile from flooding. Similar wooden taps were also used to control the distribution of water flow.
Later, due to the development of smelting technology and water conservancy machinery, Europe's requirements for valves gradually increased, so copper and aluminum plug valves were invented, and the valves entered metal. In 1769, Watt invented the steam engine and officially entered the field of machinery industry. A large number of plug valves, safety valves, check valves and butterfly valves are used in steam engines. From the 18th to the 19th century, the rapid promotion of steam engines in mining, smelting, textiles, machinery manufacturing and other industries increased the number and quality of valves, resulting in the emergence of slide valves. The successive emergence of globe valves with threaded stems and wedge gate valves with trapezoidal threaded stems was a major breakthrough in the development of valves. The emergence of these two types of valves not only met the continuous increase in valve pressure and temperature in various industries at that time. Requirements, but also initially met the requirements for flow regulation.
Since then, with the rise of the power, petroleum, chemical, and shipbuilding industries, various high and medium pressure valves have developed rapidly. After World War II, due to the development of various special materials, including polymeric materials, lubricating materials, stainless steel and cobalt-based cemented carbides, ancient plug valves and butterfly valves gained new applications, and ball valves and diaphragm valves evolved based on plug valves have developed rapidly. The variety of globe valves, gate valves and other valves has increased and the quality has improved. The valve manufacturing industry has gradually become an important department of the machinery industry.
