Knowra Bi Sheng Bi Sheng Bi Sheng was an 11th-century Chinese artisan credited with developing the earliest known movable-type printing system, using individual ceramic characters.
Movable type : A printing method that assembles reusable individual characters or other pieces into a page. Bi Sheng’s innovation was an early system for arranging and reusing individual characters.
Shen Kuo : A Song-dynasty scholar and official whose writings recorded observations on science, technology, and society. His book provides the principal account of Bi Sheng’s movable type.
Printing in China : The history of printing technologies and practices developed in China, including block printing and movable type. Bi Sheng’s work is an early episode in China’s extensive printing history.
Historical sources : Documents, objects, and other evidence used to reconstruct past events and societies. The account of Bi Sheng depends chiefly on a passage written by Shen Kuo.
Ceramic type : Printing characters made from fired clay or other ceramic material. Bi Sheng’s characters were made of ceramic rather than carved as a single page.
Dream Pool Essays : A collection of notes by Shen Kuo, completed around 1088, covering varied subjects and observations. Its description of Bi Sheng is the earliest known written record of his printing system.
Jikji : A Korean Buddhist text printed in 1377 using movable metal type, the oldest extant book printed with that method. It is a much later East Asian example of movable type, preserved as a physical book.
Archaeology of printing : The study of surviving printed objects, tools, and production traces from earlier printing cultures. No securely identified examples of Bi Sheng’s type or printed pages are known to survive.
Chinese characters : The logographic writing system used for Chinese and adapted for several other languages. The large character inventory shaped the practical challenges of his printing method.
Northern Song dynasty : The Chinese dynasty that ruled northern China from 960 until its conquest in 1127. Bi Sheng’s work arose amid the period’s commercial growth and expanding book culture.
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