Movable type

Movable type is the system and technology of printing and typography that uses movable components to reproduce the elements of a document usually on the medium of paper.

Overview

The world's first movable type printing technology for paper books was made of porcelain materials and was invented around 1040 AD in China during the Northern Song dynasty by the inventor Bi Sheng. The invention was recorded in the Dream Pool Essays by Chinese scholar-official and polymath Shen Kuo. This extant book provides a detailed description of the technical details of Bi Sheng's invention of movable type printing. The first recorded use of copper movable type in the 12th century is from a legal and financial document of the Jin Dynasty. This printed paper document titled , is a technical specification or report related to the production of paper currency. The document is dated between 1137 and 1162 during the reign of Emperor Hailingwang, which places it firmly in the mid-12th century. The critical piece of evidence comes from a notation within this document. It states that the method used to print paper money with "铜版镂花", which translates to "copper plate with engraved patterns/characters,” using individual copper characters arranged on a plate for printing the identifying code of the money to be circulated. Another book in 1193 CE that describes the use of clay movable type is the by Zhou Bida, a prominent statesman and scholar, who personally documented on the preface of his book, that he used the method of "clay characters" to print his book. Yutang Zaji is a book, specifically a work of Chinese biji literature. Biji books are a genre of Chinese writing that feature an eclectic mix of anecdotes, observations, historical notes, and literary criticism, without a strict organizational structure. The Yutang zaji is part of this tradition. This is the oldest extant book that was printed using movable type. Since it’s considered an important primary source for the study of Song Dynasty bureaucratic and cultural history, there are modern printed editions and digital versions of this text. The Yuan dynasty official Wang Zhen used wooden movable type for printing paper money, as evidenced by a preserved 1287 printing plate for a "Yuan Dynasty banknote". The earliest adoption of this practice was in Korea during the Goryeo Dynasty in the 14th century, with the later creation of the Jikji in 1377 - a book printed with movable type by Choe Yun-ui during Korea’s Goryeo dynasty, using metal movable type.
The spread of both movable-type systems was, to some degree, limited to primarily East Asia. The creation of the printing press in Europe may have been influenced by various sporadic reports of movable type technology brought back to Europe by returning business people and missionaries to China. Some of these medieval European accounts are still preserved in the library archives of the Vatican and Oxford University among many others.
Around 1450, German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg invented the metal movable-type printing press, along with innovations in casting the type based on a matrix and hand mould. The small number of alphabetic characters needed for European languages was an important factor. Gutenberg was the first to create his type pieces from an alloy of lead, tin, and antimony—and these materials remained standard for 550 years.
For alphabetic scripts, movable-type page setting was quicker than woodblock printing. The metal type pieces were more durable and the lettering was more uniform, leading to typography and fonts. The high quality and relatively low price of the Gutenberg Bible established the superiority of movable type in Europe and the use of printing presses spread rapidly. The printing press may be regarded as one of the key factors fostering the Renaissance and, due to its effectiveness, its use spread around the globe.
The 19th-century invention of hot metal typesetting and its successors caused movable type to decline in the 20th century.

Precursors to movable type

Letter punch and coins

The technique of imprinting multiple copies of symbols or glyphs with a master type punch made of hard metal first developed around 3000 BC in ancient Sumer. These metal punch types can be seen as precursors of the letter punches adapted in later millennia to printing with movable metal type. Cylinder seals were used in Mesopotamia to create an impression on a surface by rolling the seal on wet clay.

Seals and stamps

Seals and stamps may have been precursors to movable type. The uneven spacing of the impressions on brick stamps found in the Mesopotamian cities of Uruk and Larsa, dating from the 2nd millennium BC, has been conjectured by some archaeologists as evidence that the stamps were made using movable type. The enigmatic Minoan Phaistos Disc of –1600 BC has been considered by one scholar as an early example of a body of text being reproduced with reusable characters: it may have been produced by pressing pre-formed hieroglyphic "seals" into the soft clay. A few authors even view the disc as technically meeting all definitional criteria to represent an early incidence of movable-type printing. In the West the practice of sealing documents with an impressed personal or official insignia, typically from a worn signet ring, became established under the Roman Empire, and continued through the Byzantine and Holy Roman empires, into the 19th century, when a wet signature became customary.
Seals in China have been used since at least the Shang dynasty. In the Western Zhou, sets of seal stamps were encased in blocks of type and used on clay moulds for casting bronzes. By the end of the 3rd century BCE, seals were also used for printing on pottery. In the Northern dynasties textual sources contain references to wooden seals with up to 120 characters. The seals had a religious element to them. Daoists used seals as healing devices by impressing therapeutic characters onto the flesh of sick people. They were also used to stamp food, creating a talismanic character to ward off disease. The first evidence of these practices appeared under a Buddhist context in the mid 5th century CE. Centuries later, seals were used to create hundreds of Buddha images. According to Tsien Tsuen-hsuin, Chinese seals had greater potential to turn into movable type due to their square, rectangular, and flat shape suited to a printing surface, whereas seals in the west were cylindrical or scabaroid, round or oval, and mostly used for pictures rather than writing.

Woodblock printing

Bones, shells, bamboo slips, metal tablets, stone tablets, silk, as well as other materials were previously used for writing. However, following the invention of paper during the Chinese Han dynasty, writing materials became more portable and economical. Yet, copying books by hand was still labour-consuming. Not until the Xiping Era, towards the end of the Eastern Han dynasty, did sealing print and monotype appear. These were used to print designs on fabrics and to print texts.
By about the 8th century during the Tang dynasty, woodblock printing was invented and worked as follows. First, the neat hand-copied script was stuck on a relatively thick and smooth board, with the front of the paper sticking to the board, the paper being so thin it was transparent, the characters showing in reverse distinctly so that every stroke could be easily recognized. Then, carvers cut away the parts of the board that were not part of the character, so that the characters were cut in relief, completely differently from those cut intaglio. When printing, the bulging characters would have some ink spread on them and be covered by paper. With workers' hands moving on the back of paper gently, characters would be printed on the paper. By the Song dynasty, woodblock printing came to its heyday. Although woodblock printing played an influential role in spreading culture, there were some significant drawbacks. Carving the printing plate required considerable time, labour, and materials. It also was not convenient to store these plates and was difficult to correct mistakes.

History

Ceramic movable type

developed the first known movable-type system for printing in China around 1040 AD during the Northern Song dynasty, using ceramic materials. As described by the Chinese scholar Shen Kuo :
After his death, ceramic movable type may have spread to the Tangut kingdom of Western Xia, where a Buddhist text known as the Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra was found in modern Wuwei, Gansu, dating to the reign of Emperor Renzong of Western Xia. The text features traits that have been identified as hallmarks of ceramic movable type such as the hollowness of the character strokes and deformed and broken strokes. The ceramic movable-type also passed onto Bi Sheng's descendants. The next mention of movable type occurred in 1193 when a Southern Song chief counselor, Zhou Bida, attributed the movable-type method of printing to Shen Kuo. However Shen Kuo did not invent the movable type but credited it to Bi Sheng in his Dream Pool Essays. Zhou used ceramic type to print print the Yutang Zaji in 1193. Further evidence of the spread of movable type appears in the Binglü Xiansheng Wenji by Deng Su, which references the use of metal frames in movable type printing to print poems. The ceramic movable type was mentioned by Kublai Khan's councilor Yao Shu, who convinced his pupil Yang Gu to print language primers using this method.
The claim that Bi Sheng's ceramic types were "fragile" and "not practical for large-scale printing" and "short lived" were refuted by later experiments. Bao Shicheng wrote that fired clay moveable type was "as hard and tough as horn"; experiments show that clay type, after being fired in a kiln, becomes hard and difficult to break, such that it remains intact after being dropped from a height of two metres onto a marble floor. The length of ceramic movable types in China was 1 to 2 centimetres, not 2 mm, thus hard as horn. But similar to metal type, ceramic type did not hold the water-based Chinese calligraphic ink well, and had an added disadvantage of uneven matching of the type which could sometimes result from the uneven changes in size of the type during the firing process.
Ceramic movable type was used as late as 1844 in China from the Song dynasty through to the Qing dynasty.