In the 3rd century BC/KLOC-0, a printing method using seals appeared in China, which is the most primitive printing. In the fourth century BC, stone carvings appeared in China; In the third century, rubbings appeared; At the beginning of the 7th century, people in China invented block printing.
During the Northern Song Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty (1041-1048), the civilian Bi Sheng invented movable type printing. Since then, the printing efficiency has been greatly improved.
In the second year of Dade in Yuan Dynasty (AD 1298), agronomist Wang Zhen (then the magistrate of Jingde County, Anhui Province) printed his own book "Agricultural Book" and his own edited "Jingde County Records" with wooden movable type. The article "Making Movable Type Printing Calligraphy" is attached to the end of Wang Zhennong's book, which introduces in detail his use of wooden movable type printing books:
Today, there is another handy method: make a wooden board as a helmet, cut the bamboo pieces into rows, carve the wooden board into words, and chisel it bit by bit with a small saw. For each word, trim the periphery with a knife, compare the size and height, and then typeset it, cut it into bamboo pieces and clip it up. When the helmet is full, tie it firmly with wood and print it out with ink.
This is the general situation of Wang Zhenmu movable type printing. In addition, he also recorded in detail the methods of rhyme, lettering, lettering, lettering, wheel making, lettering and lettering, and described every detail in detail.
Dongyuan's woodcut movable type printing technology is very elegant. The basic production process is interview (topic opening) → copy manuscript (editing) → proofreading → typesetting → proofreading → printing → circulation → dicing → word filling → spectrum distribution → rough binding (punching and twisting) → spectrum distribution (trimming) → assembly → cover → binding, etc. 16. The genealogy of Ji Zi, a native of Dongyuan, is readily available, and the printed spectrum is all in Xuan paper, which is simple and elegant and full of historical sense. Dongyuan wood movable type printing has two characteristics: First, the lettering used in block printing is old Song style, and the font is Gu Zhuo. Since the Ming Dynasty, the old Song style, as an official font, has long monopolized solemn occasions such as proclamations and bulletins, and now it is extremely rare. "Rare things are precious", and the music made by Dongyuan people is valuable. Second, the carving and binding work is exquisite. Their lettering has the main points: backhand, first horizontal, then vertical, then left; Pay attention to the materials used: the lettering must use good pear wood and must not be sloppy; There is a formula for word search, which is a song that says, "The king builds a palace and the court spreads tenderness." The subalterns are like a law, flat and clean ... "and other ancestral songs with the word 158 contain the radicals of most Chinese characters, which are very rhyming and catchy in dialect; Typesetting has a format. First, the preface, postscript and chronology are typeset according to the layout of ordinary ancient books, followed by the text, and each page has five vertical grids, each grid is a generation, indicating that five generations live together. Because the genealogy is preserved and consulted as the historical archives of the clan, the number of prints is not much, usually only a few sets are printed, so they are all printed by hand. Printing must be grinded and then "brushed down". Rinse the layout with water, dry it for a while, and then brush the ink. The next brush is exquisite. You only need to brush it once in rainy days, occasionally in dry days, and several times a day. The amount of ink used should not be too much or too little, and the force should be even. If you use too much ink, the force will be blurred, and if you use too little ink, you can't see clearly. After dozens of pages and hundreds of pages of spectrum are printed, a roll of antique wooden movable type prints is made by circling, marking, punching, rubbing paper, trimming, covering and sewing outer lines. In short, there are more than a dozen processes, each of which requires real effort. The most important ones are lettering, word searching and typesetting, which are highly technical and difficult to learn. On June 5438+065438+ 10, 2002, the feature film Buried Material Evidence (broadcast many times after May 2003) was filmed and produced by CCTV's Journey to Discovery, saying: "People make movable type from pear wood, and each piece is the same size. In the wooden frame where movable type is installed, each line is clamped with a wooden fence, and the fixed template can be directly used for printing. Every step here is exactly the same as that described by Wang Zhen in Yuan Dynasty. Their practice seems to have been handed down intact from ancient times ... "All this fully proves that Dongyuan wooden movable type printing is the true biography of ancient wooden movable type printing, and it also proves that Wang Zhen's detailed description of wooden movable type printing calligraphy in Nongshu is a true scientific record, and movable type printing was already a developed industry in society at that time.