The earliest form of Chinese printing relied on blocks cut from wood. These blocks were used to print textiles and reproduce Buddhist texts. Short religious texts printed in this fashion was carried as charms. Eventually, the Chinese also began printing longer scrolls and books. One of the oldest surviving books is a Buddhist scripture dated to AD. It was found in a cave near Dunhuang, a major stop on the Silk Road.
We also know that comparatively large quantities of books existed in Shu in the s and could bet purchased from private book. As the 9th century gave way to the 10th, book printing seems to have become well-established and something that was carried out in many different parts of China. Examples of what was printed are Buddhist scriptures, Confucian scriptures, dictionaries, and books about mathematics. Movable type was first created by Bi Sheng , who used baked clay, which was very fragile.
The Yuan-dynasty official Wang Zhen is credited with the introduction of wooden movable type, a more durable option, around Francis Bacon , a leading philosopher, politician, and adviser to King James I of England, was unaware of the origins of these inventions but deeply impressed by their significance when he wrote:.
These are to be seen nowhere more clearly than those three which were unknown to the ancients [the Greeks], and of which the origin, though recent, is obscure and inglorious; namely printing, gunpowder, and the magnet. For these three have changed the whole face and stage of things throughout the world, the first in literature, the second in warfare, the third in navigation; whence have followed innumerable changes; insomuch that no empire, no sect, no star, seems to have exerted greater power and influence in human affairs than these three mechanical discoveries.
More about the History of Printing in China. From then on practically all important books were produced by block printing. During the Ch'ing-li period the printing technique was further advanced through the invention of movable type.
However, even the greatest technology is constrained by cultural circumstances. Chinese character ideograms are too specific.
Consequently, the thousands of distinct characters are difficulte to categorize in molds. And although the more complex characters can often be decomposed into simpler elements, the process of doing so is so unsystematic that mechanising it efficiently proved impossible.
True mass printing could only thrive in a culture with a less sophisticated writing system — an alphabet of few characters. Movable type is a reform in the history of printing and contributed much to human civilization. The basic print technology may have made its way to Europe from China in the s, although some scholars claim that a European had the insight independently.
Building on movable type in the s, Dutch goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg transformed Western civilization and society with mass printing, enabling the dispersal of information to the populace. This print invention is regarded by many as the invention of the millennium.
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