bi sheng developed a method of printing called movable type that greatly stimulated the growth of literacy.
bi sheng developed a method of printing called movable type that greatly stimulated the growth of literacy.
who developed a method of printing called movable type that greatly stimulated the growth of literacy?
bi sheng
printing technology in the form of movable type was invented by bi sheng (; 990–1051) in the 11th century. the work of bi sheng was written of by shen kuo in his "dream pool essays" (mengxi bitan). movable type, alongside woodblock printing, increased literacy with the mass production of printed materials. this meant that parents could encourage sons to learn to read and write and therefore be able to take the imperial examination and become part of the growing learned bureaucracy. movable type printing was further advanced in joseon era korea, where bi sheng's baked clay characters were scrapped for metal type characters in 1234. the movable type of bi sheng was later improved upon by wang zhen (1290–1333), who invented wooden movable type c. 1298, and hua sui (1439–1513), who invented bronze movable type in china in 1490; yet the koreans had metal movable type before hua sui, and even wang zhen had experimented with tin-metal movable type. although movable type and woodblock printing would remain the dominant types of printing methods for centuries, the european printing press (employing the hellenistic screw-press) was eventually adopted by east asian countries.
science and technology of the song dynasty
although wang's "nong shu" was mostly printed by use of woodblock printing, his innovation of wooden movable type soon became popularly used in the region of anhui. wang's wooden movable type was used to print the local gazetteer paper of jingde city, which incorporated the use of 60,000 written characters organized on revolving tables. during the year of 1298, roughly one hundred copies of this were printed by wooden movable type in a month's time. following in the footsteps of wang, in 1322 the magistrate of fenghua, zhejiang province, named ma chengde, printed confucian classics with movable type of 100,000 written characters on needed revolving tables. the process of metal movable type was also developed in joseon korea by the 13th century, while metal movable type was not pioneered in china until the ming dynasty (1368–1644) printer hua sui used bronze movable type in 1490. although metal movable type became available in china during the ming period, wooden movable type persisted in common use even until the 19th century. after that point, the european printing press machine first pioneered by johannes gutenberg in the 15th century became the mainstay and standard in china and for the most part the global community until the advent of digital printing and the modern computer printer.
wang zhen (inventor)