Bi Sheng: The Invention of Movable Type Printing

During the Northern Song Dynasty, block printing was very popular. Legend has it that there is a master sculptor in Xishan, Hangzhou, who is called the king of Excalibur. He is famous for his outstanding skills, but he is eccentric and never accepts apprentices. Bi Sheng was a child at that time. After listening to others, he went to learn from the teacher. Seeing that he was clever and the knife king was very pleasing to the eye, he made an exception and accepted this little apprentice. Bi Sheng got up early and went to bed late, studying carving skills hard. Soon, his technology has made great progress. One day a few years later, Shen Daowang carved the Preface to the Lanting Pavilion by Wang Xizhi, a great calligrapher in Jin Dynasty, for Bi Sheng to watch and ponder. I know that Bi Sheng accidentally touched the teacher's arm, and the last line was carved into a zigzag. So the whole board will be scrapped. At that time, I didn't blame Shen Daowang without him, but Bi Sheng was sad for several days. At the same time, he also thought, woodcut printing is so troublesome, can you improve it? From then on, Bi Sheng thought about it whenever he had time. One day, the master asked him to go to the street to buy food. As he walked, he thought, before passing the booth where stamps were carved, he saw the stamps arranged neatly. He thought that if printing can arrange the required words one by one like carving stamps, it will win, and don't affect the whole carving because one word is broken. He remembered the game of kneading clay figurines with children at home. Why, don, can I try clay? When he is free, he makes squares out of clay and engraves villains on them. Dry it and paint it with ink, and it will be printed. Later, he asked the master who fired porcelain. After firing, movable type becomes hard and elastic and becomes movable type. When typesetting, movable type is fixed in an iron frame, so it can be printed like a block of wood. Movable type printing not only saves a lot of materials and time, but also greatly improves the quantity and quality of printing, making books more widely circulated. Bi Sheng's invention predated that of Europe by more than 400 years. He became the originator of movable type printing and made indelible contributions to the development of human civilization and the spread of culture.