The story of Bi Sheng, the father of movable type printing

Feng Dao, a great bureaucrat in the Five Dynasties, began to print and distribute the Five Classics with block printing. To print a page of a book, you must first carve the words on the board. It takes months or a year to carve a book. If it is a big book, it will take several years and a lot of manpower and material resources. In the Northern Song Dynasty, block printing was very popular. According to legend, there is a famous sculptor in Xishan, Hangzhou, who is called "the king of magical knives". However, he is eccentric and never accepts apprentices. At that time, Bi Sheng was still a child, so he listened to others and went to see Master. The "King of Excalibur" saw that he was young, but he was smart and likable, so he took this little apprentice. Bi Sheng followed his master from dawn to dusk, studying hard and practicing his carving skills. It wasn't long before his technology made great progress. One day a few years later, the "Magic Knife King" carved the Preface to the Orchid Pavilion by Wang Xizhi, a great calligrapher in Jin Dynasty, for Bi Sheng to watch and ponder. I don't know that Bi Sheng accidentally touched the master's arm, and the word "Zhi" in the last line was broken. In this way, the whole board is scrapped. At that time, the "King of Excalibur" didn't blame him, but Bi Sheng was so sad that he couldn't eat or sleep, and he was sad for many days. At the same time, he also thought, woodcut printing is so troublesome, can you improve it? Since then, Bi Sheng has been thinking about it as soon as he has time. One day, the master asked him to go to the street to buy food. As he walked, he thought that he saw a neat row of stamps before passing the booth where stamps were carved. He thought that if printing can arrange the required words one by one like carving stamps, it will not affect the whole carving because one word is broken. He remembered the game of kneading clay figurines with children at home. Why don't I try mud? When he is free, he makes a square with clay and engraves inverted characters on it. After drying, it is painted with ink and printed. He is extremely happy! Later, he asked the master who burned 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 "ancestor" of movable type printing and made indelible contributions to the development of human culture. The Ancient Xuanwumen Spring and Autumn Zhuo Xin Classics of the Fugitive of Postgraduate Entrance Examination