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Information about Bi Sheng

Bì Shēng (Traditional Chinese: 畢昇; Simplified Chinese: 毕升; Wade-Giles: Pì Shēng; 990-1051 AD) was the inventor of the first known movable type printing system. Bi Sheng's type was made of baked clay and was invented between 1041 and 1048 in China.

Movable type printing

Bi Sheng was a commoner and his ancestry and details were not recorded. He was recorded only in the Writings Beside the Meng Creek (夢溪筆談 Mengxi Bitan, or Dream Pool Essays) by Chinese scholar, official, and polymath scientist Shen Kuo (沈括) (1031–1095). Writings Beside the Meng Creek, however, gave detailed and sufficient description on the technical details of Bi Sheng's invention of movable type:

During the reign of Chingli, [1041-1048] Bi Sheng, a man of unofficial position, made movable type. His method was as follows: he took sticky clay and cut in it characters as thin as the edge of a coin. Each character formed, as it were, a single type. He baked them in the fire to make them hard. He had previously prepared an iron plate and he had covered his plate with a mixture of pine resin, wax, and paper ashes. When he wished to print, he took an iron frame and set it on the iron plate. In this he placed the types, set close together. When the frame was full, the whole made one solid block of type. He then placed it near the fire to warm it. When the paste [at the back] was slightly melted, he took a smooth board and pressed it over the surface, so that the block of type became as even as a whetstone.[]


For each character there were several types, and for certain common characters there were twenty or more types each, in order to be prepared for the repetition of characters on the same page. When the characters were not in use he had them arranged with paper labels, one label for each rhyme-group, and kept them in wooden cases.[0]


However, Bi Sheng's fragile clay types were not practical for large-scale printing.[2] The government official Wang Zhen (fl. 1290-1333 AD) improved Bi Sheng's fragile clay types by creating movable types out of wood, as his process increased the speed of typesetting as well. Afterwards, metal movable type printing was developed in Korea and in China by 1490 with the bronze metal movable type of the wealthy printer Hua Sui (1439-1513).

See Also

References

1. ^ Tsien, Tsuen-Hsuin (1985). "part one, vol.5", in Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China,: Paper and Printing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Page 201-202.
2. ^ Sohn, Pow-Key, "Early Korean Printing," Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 79, No. 2 (Apr.-Jun., 1959), pp.96-103 (100)
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Movable Type is a weblog publishing system developed by California-based Six Apart. It was publicly announced on 3 September 2001,[2] and version 1.0 was publicly released on 8 October 2001.
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The Dream Pool Essays (Pinyin: Meng Xi Bi Tan; Wade-Giles: Meng Ch'i Pi T'an Chinese: 夢溪筆談／梦溪笔谈) was an extensive book written by the polymath Chinese scientist and statesman
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Shen Kuo, a Chinese scientist famous for his concepts of true north and land formation, among others.
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Bronze is any of a broad range of copper alloys, usually with tin as the main additive, but sometimes with other elements such as phosphorus, manganese, aluminium, or silicon. (See table below.) It was particularly significant in antiquity, giving its name to the Bronze Age.
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Hua Sui (Traditional Chinese: 華燧; Simplified Chinese:华燧; Hanyu Pinyin: Huá Suì) (1439-1513 AD) was a Chinese scholar and printer of Wuxi, Jiangsu province during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 AD).
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woodblock printing on paper and movable type were invented in China before their invention in Europe. Both methods were replaced in the second half of the 19th century by Western-style printing.
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Woodblock printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper.
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Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (c. 1400 – February 3, 1468) was a German goldsmith and printer, who is credited with inventing movable type printing in Europe (c. 1439) and mechanical printing globally.
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printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring an image. The systems involved were first assembled in Germany by the goldsmith Johann Gutenberg in the 1430s.
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