Historical contribution
What Sheng contributed
Shen Kuo’s 11th-century account describes Bi Sheng making individual characters from baked clay, arranging them on an iron plate and using multiple formes to alternate between composition and printing. Wang Zhen later described wooden type and a rotating type table for sorting and retrieval. Korean printers developed bronze and other metal type traditions; the 1377 Jikji is the oldest surviving book printed with movable metal type, not.
Why it mattered
Makes printed pages locally revisable and character units reusable.
Connected topics
Where this fits in ITEM
Evidence
Sources and further reading
- Baegun hwasang chorok buljo jikji simche yojeol:
UNESCO Memory of the World
- Dream Pool Essays, movable type account translated in Tsien Tsuen-Hsuin, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 5 Part 1:
Shen Kuo
- Jikji Memory of the World Prize and historical overview:
Jikji Memory of the World Prize and historical overview:
- The Rise of Printing in Medieval East Asia:
Oxford Research Encyclopedia