modern, factory produced movable type became available in the late 19th century.
modern, factory produced movable type became available in the late 19th century.
when did modern, factory produced movable type become available?
late 19th century
modern, factory-produced movable type was available in the late 19th century. it was held in the printing shop in a "job case", a drawer about 2 inches high, a yard wide, and about two feet deep, with many small compartments for the various letters and ligatures. the most popular and accepted of the job case designs in america was the california job case, which took its name from the pacific coast location of the foundries that made the case popular.
movable type
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)