Regarding movable type printing technology

Regarding movable type printing technology

After the invention of woodblock printing, printing books became much more convenient than manual copying, but woodblock printing also had many drawbacks. For example, printing a page requires carving a plate, and carving a book with multiple contents often takes several years of effort on the plate. After carving, the book plate also occupies a large amount of space for storage. To print other works, it is necessary to re carve them, which consumes a lot of manpower, material resources, and time.

Under the urging of such demands, according to Shen Kuo's "Dream Pool Essays", during the Qingli period of the Northern Song Dynasty (1041-1048 AD), Bi Sheng (from Yingshan, Hubei, around 990-1053 AD) was the first to invent movable type printing in China and the world. Movable type printing saves the cost of engraving and shortens the publishing time, making it both economical and convenient. It is a pioneering achievement in the history of printing. Bi Sheng first separated each character independently, instead of spending time carving the entire version. He first tried using wood, but he found that the texture density of wood was different. After being soaked in water, it had strong elasticity, causing unevenness in the layout of the board. The ink on the wooden characters was uneven, and medication was needed to bond them to the base board, making it inconvenient to remove. After multiple failed experiments, he switched to using clay to make characters and ultimately succeeded. Anyway, Bi Sheng created a type of printing plate that allows each character to be independently attached and removed, hence it is commonly referred to as a "living" character. The use of clay movable type printing by Bi Sheng undoubtedly follows the basic principles of modern lead type typesetting, except that the materials used for the type molds are different.

The basic steps of Bi Sheng movable type printing are divided into four steps:

1、 Use adhesive to engrave characters. A piece of clay carved with a single character becomes hard through fire, with a hardness comparable to that of bricks and pottery, which is called clay movable type.

2、 Plate making. Prepare an iron plate, surround it with an iron frame, and place adhesive such as rosin wax and paper ash on the inner surface of the iron plate. Then, according to the content to be printed, arrange the clay movable type in the iron frame one by one, and align the iron frame to form the plate. Finally, place it on the fire and bake it. Rosin, wax, and paper ash soften and melt into a flowing liquid when heated, flowing evenly next to the type. After flattening and cooling, a version of clay movable type is glued together.

3、 Printing. Its method is basically similar to woodblock printing.

4、 Retrieve the clay movable type. After printing each version, heat the iron plate on fire. Rosin and wax can melt at low temperatures, and the clay movable type has not been damaged and can be recycled. By using movable type printing technology, clay movable type can be reused. A few rare types can be temporarily engraved and burned hard, making it extremely fast to print over a hundred thousand copies. In recent years, several books printed with clay movable type have been discovered in the Beijing Library.

Another development besides clay and wood movable type is movable type made of metal materials.

Printing provided an important material condition for the rapid development of science in Europe after breaking through the long darkness of the Middle Ages, as well as the emergence of the Renaissance movement. As Marx once pointed out, the invention of printing, gunpowder, and the compass was a necessary prerequisite for the development of the bourgeoisie.

Regarding movable type printing technology