During the Northern Song Dynasty in China (104 1 ~ 1048), Bi Sheng invented clay movable type, which was the beginning of movable type printing. Later, tin type, wood type, copper type, lead type and clay type were developed. Among them, the clay type invented by Bi Sheng has a great influence on later generations, second only to woodcut. There used to be iron movable type in ancient Korea. Modern lead alloy movable type was invented by German Johann Gutenberg in 1950s.
Basic introduction of Chinese names: movable type mbth: movable type pinyin: húo zì Athena Chu: ㄏㄨㄛㄗㄧ?, basic information, quotation explanation, basic concept, history, function, advantages, evolution, production method, overseas promotion and basic information of movable type disk with meaning. Invented by Bi Sheng in Song Dynasty. Before the Qing Dynasty, it was made of cement, wood, tin, copper, lead and other materials, and now it is made of lead, antimony and tin alloys. Ming Lushen's Biography of Jintai: "Recently, Baling people use copper and lead as movable type, which is particularly convenient to print on the board." Cao Hongkui's movable type typesetting technology, chapter 1, section 2: "So some people create words to typeset. If there are typos, missing sentences and multiple words, it will be convenient to correct them. This single character is called movable type. " 2. refers to the flexible use of words. Ming Hu Yinglin's "Four Robbie Xinludan Leads to Shaoshi Mountain": "Robbie is a movable type." According to legend, "Robbie" is a kind of stuffing pasta that is deeply loved by ethnic minorities Bi Shi and Roche (actually not), so "Robbie" is used to represent this flour, so it is a flexible word. 3. Refers to words that are still in use. Lu Xun's Letters to Yao Ke: "Actually, it is deceptive to find movable type in ancient books. For example, if you open Selected Works, how can you decide whether its words are alive or dead? The so-called' living' person is nothing more than a word that you can understand at a glance. " The basic concept of movable type is a single typesetting word made of metal or nonmetal materials. An inverted word or symbol at the top of a square cylinder or cuboid. Commonly used printing movable type, commonly known as movable type, is mainly made of metal lead, with a certain proportion of tin and antimony metals, and is cast by movable type casting machine. The distance from the letter of movable type to the foot of movable type is called the height of movable type. The height of movable type is measured in metric system and in millimeters. The distance from the back of movable type to the belly of movable type is called movable type size, also called font size. In China, movable type is measured by the mixed system of point system supplemented by number system. Printing is one of the four great inventions in ancient China. It was invented by the ancient working people in China through long-term practice and research. Since the invention of paper in the Han Dynasty, writing materials are lighter and more economical than Oracle Bone Inscriptions, bamboo slips, inscriptions and silk books used in the past, but copying books is still very labor-intensive and far from meeting the needs of society. The method of copying rubbings appeared in Xiping period (AD 172- 178). In the Sui Dynasty around 600 AD, people got inspiration from seal cutting, and block printing was invented for the first time in human history. Engraving printing is to paste neatly copied manuscripts on smooth wooden boards with a certain thickness. The thin and almost transparent manuscript paper is stuck on the front of the board, and the words become reflexive and the strokes are clear. The engraver uses a carving knife to cut off the part of the layout that has no handwriting, and it becomes a convex writing, which is completely different from the concave inscription. When printing, apply ink to the raised font, then cover it with paper, and gently wipe the back of the paper, and the handwriting will remain on the paper. Song Dynasty was the heyday of block printing. Block printing has played an important role in the spread of culture, but it also has obvious shortcomings: first, block printing is time-consuming and laborious; Second, it is inconvenient to store a large number of books; Third, it is not easy to correct typos. Bi Sheng, a folk inventor in the Northern Song Dynasty, invented movable type printing and improved block printing. Bi Sheng was an ordinary civilian intellectual in the mid-Northern Song Dynasty, and was called Buyi at that time. He summed up the rich practical experience of block printing in past dynasties. After repeated experiments, he made clay movable type in Song Renzong in the Qing Dynasty (A.D. 104 1- 1048) and made typesetting and printing, thus completing a major revolution in the history of printing. The function of block printing can print hundreds or even thousands of copies, which plays a great role in the spread of culture. However, block printing is time-consuming and laborious, and large books often take several years, and the storage of block printing takes up a lot of space, and it is often damaged by deformation, moth-eaten and corrosion. Small quantities of books that don't need to be reprinted become waste. In addition, typos found in lettering are very difficult to correct, and it is often necessary to re-engrave the whole lettering. The advantage of movable type plate making just avoids the shortage of engraving. As long as enough single movable type is prepared in advance, you can make up at any time, which greatly speeds up the plate making time. After printing, movable type can be disassembled and reused. Moreover, movable type occupies less space than lettering and is easy to store and keep. In this way, the superiority of movable type is revealed. The idea of printing with movable type has a long history. Qin Shihuang unified national weights and measures and stamped 40 letters on pottery vessels. Archaeologists believe that "this is the beginning of China's movable type typesetting. Although he invented it, it was not widely used". Ancient seals also have some enlightenment to movable type printing. The record of movable type printing was first seen in Meng Qian Bi Tan by Shen Kuo, a famous scientist in the Song Dynasty. A.D. 104 1~ 1048, Bi Sheng Buyi made characters with clay, and each character was a seal, which was hardened by fire and made into pottery. When typesetting, prepare an iron plate and relax the mixture of incense, wax and paper ash. Put it on an iron plate with an iron shelf around it. The iron shelf is full of words to be printed. It is a plate. Then bake with fire, melt the mixture, integrate it with the movable type block, and press it on the movable type with a flat plate while it is hot to make the text smooth. You can print it. It is inefficient to print two or three copies like this. If there are many copies, dozens or even thousands, the efficiency will be high. In order to improve efficiency, two iron plates are often used, one for printing and the other for typesetting. After printing one sheet, the other sheet is rearranged, which is very efficient for alternate use. Common words, such as "Zhi" and "Ye", are each made into more than 20 words, so as to be used when there is repetition in one edition. Unusual words that are not prepared are temporarily engraved and immediately burned with vegetation fire. Put all the words removed from the printing plate together with the same word in a small wooden box, and put labels classified by rhyme on the outside for easy retrieval. Bi Sheng used wood as movable type at first, but found that the density of wood grain was different, and it was easy to swell and deform when it met with water, and it was not easy to come down after being consolidated with adhesive, so he changed it to clay. Bi Sheng invented movable type printing, which improved the printing efficiency. However, his invention did not get the attention of the rulers and society at that time. After his death, movable type printing was still not popular. The clay movable type he created was not preserved. However, the movable type printing technology he invented has been passed down. 1965, the publication "observing Buddhist scriptures by observing martial arts" found in Baixiang Pagoda in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, was identified as a movable type book from Fuyuan to Chongning in the Northern Song Dynasty (1/kloc-0 ~1103). This is the earliest historical testimony of movable type printing technology in Bi Sheng. Zhou Bida (1 129~ 1204), a native of the Song Dynasty, was once known as Ming Jigong. In his later years, he studied Bi Sheng's methods from Shen Kuo and printed his own works. He also made a small change, changing the iron plate into a copper plate. Copper plates transfer heat better than iron plates and melt glue easily, but copper plates are more expensive than iron plates, which is nothing to a duke. In the Yuan Dynasty, Yao Shu (120 1~ 1278) advocated movable type printing. He taught his son Yang Gu to print books with movable type, which became a record of Zhu's primary school and recent thoughts, as well as his History of Donglai Classics. However, Yanggu clay type was improved by Song people after Bi Sheng, not the original technology in Bi Sheng. In the sixth year of Emperor Kangxi of Qing Dynasty, Zhai Shiqi was an official in Raozhou, collecting magnetic households and writing The Book of Changes. According to experts' analysis, the so-called celadon (movable type) may be a ceramic movable type fired from porcelain clay used to make celadon. 17 18 a native of Taian, Xudong, made pottery movable type and printed the Book of Changes. He calcined clay, made movable type, and used it for typesetting and printing books, still using the method used by Bi Sheng. /kloc-Zhai Jinsheng, a native of Jingxian County, Anhui Province in the 20th century, came up with the idea of printing books with clay type after reading the Bi Sheng clay type technology described in Shen Kuo's Meng Qian Bi Tan. It took him 30 years to make more than 654.38 million clay movable type. 1844, printed as "first edition of mud printing trial printing". Since then, he has published many books. In the 1960s and 1970s, thousands of clay figurines made by Zhai Jinsheng were also found in Jingxian County. These movable types come in five sizes. He proved the feasibility of Bi Sheng's invention with his own practice and broke some people's doubts about the feasibility of clay type. 1962 Zhai clay movable type found in Huizhou, Anhui Province. Wang Zhen (127 1~ 1368), a contemporary of Yanggu, created wooden movable type. Wang Zhen, a native of Dongping, Shandong Province, is an agronomist. He worked as a county magistrate several times. He left a book summarizing the experience of ancient agricultural production-Agricultural Book. This book is accompanied by Wang Zhen's wood movable type lettering, editing, word selection, typesetting and printing methods. He hired craftsmen to engrave more than 30,000 kinds of movable type in Jingde, Anhui Province, and tried to print more than 60,000 words of Jingde County annals in the second year of Yuan Chengzong Dade (1298). In less than a month, he printed 100 copies, which was very efficient. This is the first printed version of wooden movable type on record. Wang Zhen's other contribution to printing technology was the invention of the rotary typesetting disk. Made of light wood, a large wheel is about seven feet in diameter and the axle is three feet high. The wheel disc can rotate freely on the axle. According to the classification of ancient rhyme, put wooden movable type into the grid in the plate respectively. He made two roulette wheels this big, and the compositor sat between them and turned the roulette wheels to find words. This is what Wang Zhen said: "People are based on words, and words are based on rhyme". This not only improves the typesetting efficiency, but also reduces the physical labor of typesetters. It is a pioneering work in typesetting technology. Although the printed version of wooden movable type in Yuan Dynasty has been lost, there were hundreds of kinds of Uighur wooden movable type handed down at that time. There were many wooden movable types in Ming Dynasty, most of which used traditional techniques of Song and Yuan Dynasties. In the 14th year of Wanli in the Ming Dynasty (1586), Yuan, Records of Remaining Knowledge of Tianxia Temple, and Jiajing's Bi Shui Qun Ying Waiting for the Theme Meeting Yuan (about151530) were all printed in wooden movable type. In the Qing Dynasty, wood movable type technology gained unprecedented development because of its support. Wooden movable type was popular in Kangxi period, and large-scale printing of wooden movable type books began with the publication of Yingwudian Juzhen Edition Series in Qianlong period. This book has been printed and carved into 253,500 movable types of jujube. Printed into "Yingwudian Juzhen Edition Series" 134 kinds, 2389 volumes. This is the largest printing of wooden movable type books in the history of China. Making movable type with metal materials is also a development direction of movable type printing. Before Wang Zhen, people used tin as movable type. However, tin is not easy to print with ink and is difficult to popularize. At the turn of 15 and 16 century, copper movable type became popular in Wuxi, Suzhou and Nanjing, Jiangsu. Copper movable type printing entered a new era in Qing Dynasty. The biggest project is the integration of printing 10,000 ancient and modern books. It is estimated that the number of copper movable type is100 ~ 2 million. Making method Bi Sheng's method is: make a blank with the same specification with clay, engrave the reverse character at one end, the height of the character is as high as the thickness of the copper coin edge, and harden it with fire to become a single clay movable type. In order to meet the needs of typesetting, when repeated in the same version, there are usually several or even dozens of commonly used words for use. If you encounter uncommon words, you can use them with the system if you are not prepared in advance. In order to facilitate the choice of words, the clay type is put in the wooden lattice according to rhyme, and a note is attached to indicate it. When typesetting, an iron plate with a frame is used as the base, and a layer of medicine made of turpentine, wax and paper scraps is coated on it, and then the required clay movable type is picked out one by one and arranged in the frame. After a frame is filled in, it becomes a version, and then it is baked with fire. When the medicine melts slightly, flatten the words with a flat plate, and after the medicine cools and solidifies, it becomes a version. When printing, just brush the ink on the plate, cover it with paper, and add some pressure. For continuous printing, two iron plates are used, one with a writing brush and the other with typesetting, and the two plates are used alternately. After printing, burn it with a torch, shake it gently with your hand, and the movable type will fall off the iron plate, and then put it back in the original wooden box according to the rhyme, and use it next time. Bi Sheng has also experimented with wood movable type printing, but because of uneven wood texture and difficult carving, wood movable type is deformed when it meets water, and it is difficult to separate from chemical substances, so Bi Sheng has not adopted it. Bi Sheng's method of printing books in clay type will not be easy if only two or three books are printed. If you print hundreds or thousands of copies, the work efficiency will be extremely impressive, which will not only save a lot of manpower and material resources, but also greatly improve the printing speed and quality, which is much superior to block printing. Although modern letterpress printing is incomparable to movable type printing in Bi Sheng in Song Dynasty in terms of equipment and technical conditions, the basic principles and methods are exactly the same. The invention of movable type printing has made great contributions to human culture. Among them, the contribution of Bi Sheng, a civilian inventor in China, is indelible. However, we know nothing about Bi Sheng's life story. Because Bi Sheng invented movable type printing, it was completely recorded in the famous book Meng Qian Bi Tan by Shen Kuo, a famous scientist in the Northern Song Dynasty. However, except for a few Buddhist scriptures in Xixia characters, it is speculated that they are printed with movable type, and there is no Chinese printed matter printed with movable type in the Central Plains! Overseas promotion of movable type printing in South Korea and Japan./kloc-At the end of 0/3, South Korea printed "The Heart of Cold Answer and Conformity" with metal movable type, which is the earliest existing metal movable type book in the world. 1376, the wooden movable type "Outline of Tongjian" appeared in North Korea. 1436, North Korea printed the Compendium of General Mirror with lead movable type. /kloc-At the end of 0/6, China Ancient Filial Piety Scriptures and Persuading Learning were published in Japanese movable type. The invention and spread of movable type printing in Europe 1440 years ago, Johannes Gutenberg integrated many existing technologies in Europe and invented movable type printing, which soon spread in Europe and substantially promoted the industrialization of printing. 1584, Gonzalez de Mendoza, a Spanish historian and missionary, proposed in the book History of Great China that Gutenberg was influenced by China's printing technology; China's printing was introduced to Germany in two ways, one was through Russia, and the other was through books carried by Arab merchants. Gutenberg used these China books as blueprints for his printing [5]. Mendoza's books were quickly translated into French, English and Italian, which had a great influence in Europe. French historian Louis Le Roy and writer Michel de Montaigne both agree with Mendoza's argument. An Tian, a sinologist, once argued that movable type printing in Europe originated in China with the title "Masterpiece of Deception in Europe Center: The so-called Gutenberg May Be the Inventor of Printing". Italians owe the introduction of movable type printing to Europe to Paviloka Staldi, an Italian publisher born in Lombardy. When he saw the movable type books that Kyle Poirot brought back from China, he used the movable type method to print books. To this end, the Italians specially erected a statue of him in his birthplace as a memorial. Stanislas Julien, a French sinologist, translated a piece of historical data about Bi Sheng's invention of movable type printing into French in Shen Kuo's Talk on Meng Xi. He was the first person to introduce the historical fact that Bi Sheng invented movable type printing to Europe. The type invented by Gutenberg actually contains lead, tin and antimony. Movable-type alloys gradually disappeared after the popularization of computer typesetting because of harmful metals such as lead, which were troublesome to use and insufficient technology.