As mentioned above, workers in typesetting, proofreading, proofing and imposition will have to move the arranged lead boxes again. If a book has hundreds of pages, it means that a proofing worker has to move hundreds of boxes of lead plates at a time. The workload can be imagined. Here, I also want to explain how some pictures are spelled out. First of all, you have to make the picture into a lead plate (I don't know how to do it, but I know it needs to be ablated with chemicals), and then stick the plate and the words together and fill it with lead bars in the middle. Of course, these printed pictures are all black and white in the end. However, if the pictures sent by the editing department to the printing factory are lines, they are all traced by hand with a plotter, that is, the author's manuscript is traced on sulfuric acid paper with a duckbill pen dipped in carbon ink, and then sent to plate making.

Every time the proofreader returns to the factory, the typesetting workers will use tweezers to pick up the wrong words in the box assembled by the lead plate, and then insert the correct words into the lead plate. In general, books should be proofread three times or even once or twice. When I come across some reference books, I read them in reverse because I am afraid of big proofreading changes. Therefore, the first two or three schools are the top proofreaders (proofing first but not imposition), and imposition is the proofreading of four or five schools until the final version is basically finalized. It is precisely because of the technical conditions of lead printing that imposition and error correction are more troublesome, so editors in the lead fire era are allowed to publish only after editing and processing, which is the so-called "Qi Dingqing".

After proofreading and signing, it is imposition, that is, according to the requirements of a specific printing machine, boxes of lead plates are assembled into folio or full-open versions according to the folio rule or full-open rule, and then proofing is carried out, and the page number is checked by folding hands, which is regarded as imposition completion. Under normal circumstances, a book is printed more than a dozen times, and after the imposition is completed, it is a lead version with more than a dozen rules fully open.

Next, the paper type, which is now called the proof signature payment type, probably comes from here. Paper-making is to use special cardboard with special requirements, put it on the fully assembled cliche, press it on the machine, press the cardboard into a pattern with concave characters, then pour lead water on the pattern, make a thin cliche with convex characters on the printing machine (PS version today), and put it on the flat printing machine. All the processes before printing have been completed.

I'm afraid my friends haven't seen this place yet, so let's talk about this complicated process first, not to mention how hard the workers worked in those days.

If Bi Sheng, an ancient man, invented movable type printing and conceptually completed a leap in the description of human civilization, then movable type printing after one thousand years can only be regarded as a technological innovation of this leap. The innovation of movable type materials from clay block, wood block and wood board to type makes movable type more durable, and Wang Xuanzhi's Chinese character laser phototypesetting technology means the complete end of movable type printing technology which has been inherited for thousands of years, and the beginning of a more arbitrary intelligent new printing technology. Therefore, only by comparing the plate-making and printing technology in the lead fire era can laymen really understand what a historic revolution Chinese character laser phototypesetting technology has brought.