Tide news client reporter Guo Wen
China's movable-type printing is a major revolution in the history of world printing. It began as block printing in Sui Dynasty, developed and improved by Bi Sheng in Renzong of Song Dynasty, and eventually produced movable type printing, and was transmitted to Europe by the Mongols. As one of the four great inventions of China, movable type printing in China is the forerunner of human civilization, and has created conditions for the spread and exchange of knowledge in the world.
The development of science and technology in the Song Dynasty promoted the final formation of movable type printing, and correspondingly, the popularization and use of movable type printing promoted the rapid spread and development of culture, and further enhanced the level of science and technology and culture in the Song Dynasty.
Movable type printing is the precursor of civilization
Promote the spread of world culture
The Song edition is recognized as the most beautiful and exquisite of ancient Chinese books, because of its good quality of engraving, beautiful typesetting, excellent cutting technology, and exquisite calligraphy, which has always been cherished by collectors in later generations.
The development of engraving printing reached its peak in the Song Dynasty, when the four major engraving centers in Bianjing (Kaifeng), Sichuan, Zhejiang and Fujian were formed, especially Kaifeng, the capital of the Northern Song and Hangzhou, the capital of the Southern Song, were the most prosperous.
Block printing is beautiful, but the production is cumbersome and laborious, it takes at least several years to train a skilled blocker, and it takes a lot of time to carve a page of blocks, and these blocks can only be used for the printing of a book, and can not be used many times. More importantly, if a word is wrong, the whole plate engraving can only be invalid. Therefore, block printing books are very expensive, both labor and cost.
The biggest advantage of movable type printing is "efficiency", every word can be reused, and can be freely combined and freely matched. This change makes the efficiency of printing books can be greatly improved. Mass production is fast, so that the printing cost of books can be greatly reduced, so that more people have access to books, promote knowledge dissemination and cultural development.
However, Bi Sheng, the main inventor of this important technology, was not well known at that time, and movable type printing did not attract enough attention at that time, there is little record about Bi Sheng and movable type printing in historical materials, and there is no record about Bi Sheng in the History of Song Dynasty. His invention was not popularized in the Northern Song Dynasty, almost buried in history, until the Southern Song Dynasty, some people began to use this kind of movable type printing.
It is Shen Kuo who really makes people understand movable type printing and understand Bi Sheng, and it is he who realizes the value of movable type printing and the technological revolution it will inevitably bring, so that the technology of movable type printing will not be dusty, and eventually become famous and put into practice.
From wood type to clay type
It's all in Dreamstream
Shen Kuo is an encycloped-like generalist, and his understanding and obsession with the science and technology at that time made him sensitive to the importance of movable type printing after he learned that a "cloth" Bi Sheng in Hangzhou had developed movable type printing, so he recorded the whole process of the production and use of movable type printing in a complete and detailed way in "Mengxi Pen Talk", and also recorded his own experience in using it.
According to the "Mengxi Pen Talk" and some historical materials, Shen Kuo should be about ten years old when Bi Sheng invented movable type printing during the Qingli years of Song Renzong, and the two could not have crossed paths, but after Bi Sheng died, "Sheng died, and his printing was obtained by the group and preserved until now", that is, the tools used by Bi Sheng for movable type printing were acquired and preserved by the Shen family.
Shen Kuo is an empirical scientist who practises hands-on testing on many scientific issues. based on the tools left by Bi Sheng, he made mastic movable type (" Carved with mastic, thin as the lips of money, each word is a seal, and the fire makes it hard "). The method is like this: make a blank with the same specification, engraved on one end of the anti-body single word, the height of the word stroke projection like the thickness of the edge of the copper coin, and harden with fire.
Then a framed iron plate is used as a base, which is covered with a mixture of turpentine, wax and paper ash to fix the mastic type. When the frame is full, it becomes a plate (a page). When the plate is finished, a plate is used to flatten the words, and then ink is brushed on the words, and the paper is covered, and the words can be pressed out. Shen Kuo also said: if you stop printing 32 copies, it is not easy; If you print tens of thousands of copies, it's extremely fast. It can be seen that Shen Kuo had foreseen the efficiency of movable type printing.
Shen Kuo also experimented with wooden type. He concluded: "Do not take wood as a person, the culture is dense, wet water is high and uneven, and sticky with medicine, not desirable; It is not like burnt earth, which is melted by re-fire, and brushed with the hand, and its seal falls from itself, and is not stained." The wood texture is uneven and difficult to carve; The second is wood type after water deformation; Third, wood type and medicine stick together and are not easy to separate.
It can be said that if Shen Kuo had not recorded this matter, perhaps later generations would never know who invented movable type printing, nor do they know that Bi Sheng experienced a test from wooden movable type to clay movable type in the process of research and development.
Scientific and technological achievements of ancient China
Movable type printing has become a non-genetic inheritance
Why would a cloth man want to invent wooden type?
During the Song Dynasty, publishing flourished and became an independent industry. A large number of books were printed and published, and the prosperity of the publishing industry meant the prosperity of knowledge and culture, laying a solid foundation for the Song Dynasty to become the peak of ancient Chinese science and technology.
According to research, Bi Sheng should be a engraver in Hangzhou, the center of book engraving at that time, engraving errors and missing characters have been seen in the engraving work, which not only wastes material resources, but also costs a lot of labor. Perhaps in the long process of engraving, Bi Sheng absorbed the embryonic form of movable type printing that had already appeared, and finally studied the clay movable type.
In this process, the three main steps of printing - making type, typesetting, and printing - have been fully implemented. Therefore, Bi Sheng's invention, although still very primitive and simple, but its basic principle is exactly the same as the current lead type printing method. It can be seen that Bi Sheng is a person with a scientific mind and creative spirit, and his invention is a major contribution to the development of human culture, 400 years earlier than the European Gutenberg invented lead type.
The prosperity of the publishing industry forced the means of printing to keep up with the pace of publishing. In the Southern Song Dynasty, movable type printing was popularized, and Zhou Bida, a writer in the Southern Song Dynasty, used movable type printing when he published his work "Miscella of Yutang".
With the increasing frequency of east-West communication, movable type printing was later spread to Korea, Japan, Vietnam and other places in Asia, and after the 15th century, it was spread to Europe and even the rest of the world through Russian and Arab merchants.
With the development of The Times, the ancient wood type and clay type are no longer production tools, but have become non-genetic inheritance. In June 2008, wood movable type printing technology was included in the second batch of national intangible cultural heritage list, on November 15, 2010, Ruian wood movable type printing technology in the name of Chinese movable type printing, listed in the world's "urgent protection of intangible cultural heritage" list.
Shui On's movable type printing technique is the only wood type printing technique preserved and still in use in China, which has a high historical and humanistic value, and is the physical proof that movable type printing originated in China. Today, we can also experience the handicraft process from block printing to movable type printing in Zhejiang Provincial Museum, Ruian Wood Movable type Printing Museum and Hangzhou Arts and Crafts Museum.
From traditional wood printing to type printing, and then to modern electronic printing and digital printing, printing technology has been greatly improved in efficiency and quality. The evolution of these technologies cannot be separated from the pioneering role of printing in the Song Dynasty.
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