What Zhen contributed
In the late 13th and early 14th centuries, Wang Zhen experimented with wooden movable type and described it in his agricultural treatise. His account includes a rotating table or wheel-like arrangement for organising type, a striking example of retrieval architecture responding to a large character inventory. Wooden type was easier to create than cast metal but could vary with grain, moisture and wear. 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.
Where this fits in ITEM
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