Movable Type
Pi Sheng, 1041

Links
PrintersMark History: Origins in China
Type in Asia: A Long History
Medieval China's Rich Print Culture: Harbinger of Gutenberg

"In the 1040s, a Chinese alchemist named Pi Sheng appears to have conceived of movable type made of an amalgam of clay and glue hardened by baking. He composed texts by placing the types side by side on an iron plate coated with a mixture of resin, wax, and paper ash." [source]

Pi Sheng was building upon the idea of printing which had existed in China since the end of the 2nd century AD. His innovation was to make movable, reusable character blocks rather than having to carve an entire page. What is surprising is that printing was not widely used in Asia until the idea was reintroduced 500 years later from Europe, butinstead was contained to some religious texts and governmental records in a few regions. Like Gutenberg, Pu Sheng never received recognition for his invention until long after his death.

The story of printing is a good example of how history gets written. Since currently, history is largely written by Europeans, Gutenberg seems to get credit for inventing the whole idea of printing, even tho printing had first been developed almost 800 years before. Gutenberg's contribution was to take all of the ideas about printing and mechanize them, proving to be very effective.

Submitted by
Hans-Christoph Steiner

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