According to Shen Kuo's book Meng Qian Bi Tan, Bi Sheng's movable type printing can be divided into three main steps: first, carving individual characters on small squares made of clay, and then burning them hard on the fire to become pottery movable type. Usually, these pottery movable types are packed in paper bags and arranged in a wooden lattice in vowel order. Secondly, according to the manuscript, choose the required pottery movable type, arrange it on an iron plate, put a layer of fat wax and paper ash under the words, bake them on the fire, and then press them with another iron plate after the fat wax melts, so that the words will be flat and smooth. After the iron plate cools, the arranged characters will be fixed on the iron plate, which is typesetting. The last step is ink printing. After printing, put the iron plate on the fire, and when the fat and wax melt, you can pick out the movable type, put it back in a paper bag and put it in a wooden shed for reuse.
Shen Kuo is ten years younger than Bi Sheng and is a contemporary. Moreover, the pottery movable type made by Bi Sheng was later owned by Shen Kuo's nephew. Therefore, the record that Bi Sheng invented movable type printing in Shen Kuo's Meng Qian Bi Tan is accurate and credible.
However, some Europeans once attributed the invention of movable type printing to Gutenberg. Johannes Gutenberg is from West Germany. He invented lead movable type printing, about 1440- 1448, 400 years later than Bi Sheng invented pottery movable type printing.
Movable type printing is one of the greatest inventions in human history, and it is also China's great contribution to world culture.
Like any invention, Bi Sheng invented movable type printing because of its social needs, material basis and technical conditions. China's social progress to the Northern Song Dynasty, due to economic development, commercial prosperity, and cultural prosperity, all required rapid and massive dissemination of information. Movable type printing is produced to solve the problems raised by this social demand. Printing must use paper and ink. China invented paper, oil fume and pine smoke as early as the Han Dynasty. The invention of paper and ink laid a material foundation for the birth of movable type printing. Since the Warring States, Qin and Han Dynasties, the methods of copying characters and pictures, such as seal cutting and rubbing, have provided technical conditions for the invention of movable type printing.
As the name implies, the word "seal" in printing itself contains two meanings: seal and printing; The word "brush" is the name of this rubbing and inking process. The naming of printing reveals its kinship with seals and rubbings. Seal and rubbings are two origins of movable type printing.
As early as the 4th century BC, that is, during the Warring States period, private printing was very popular. At that time, it was called "Xi". Qin Shihuang destroyed the six countries, won Chu and Choi, and carved the national seal. From then on, the word "seal" was monopolized by feudal emperors. Only the emperor's seal can be called a seal, and the seal of ordinary people can only be called a seal. Seal cutting prevailed in Han Dynasty. At first, the seals were mostly concave and negative characters, which were used for inkpad. Later, with the popularization of paper, the seal mud gradually failed, and the watermark took its place, and the number of raised orthography increased. Seal created a method to obtain orthography from reverse engraved characters, and seal in Yang Wen provided a replication technology to obtain orthography from reverse engraved characters in Yang Wen.
The area of the seal is very small, and only a few words such as name or rank can be accommodated. During the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Taoism rose. There is a school of Taoism that pays attention to notation. They carved long spells on peaches and dates, thus expanding the area of the seal. According to the book Bao Pu Zi written by Ge Hong in Jin Dynasty, Taoism has a copy of 120. It can be seen that I could copy a short article by stamping at that time. This is actually the pioneer of block printing.
Rubbing is another source of printing. Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty "ousted a hundred schools of thought and respected Confucianism alone". But at that time, Confucian classics were dictated by teachers and recorded by students. Therefore, it is inevitable that different teachers will teach different classics. In the fourth year of Xi Ping, Emperor Gaozu (AD 175), the imperial court erected a monument, on which all the important Confucian classics were engraved as the standard books for correcting the scriptures. In order to avoid the labor of copying scriptures from stone carvings, people invented the method of rubbing historical sites around the 4th century. The method of rubbing on the monument is simple. After soaking a tough thin paper, apply it on the stone tablet, then cover it with a thick absorbent paper and tap it with a brush until the paper sinks into the engraved hole on the stone tablet. Then, take off the thick paper outside, pat it with cotton wool or silk cotton, dip it in ink, and brush it gently and evenly on the thin paper. When the tissue paper dries, take it off and it will be a black and white copy. This rubbing method is the same as block printing, but the difference is that the words on the inscription are concave in the yin, while the words on block printing are convex in the yang. The words on the stone tablet are written in grass. Tope provides a replication technology to obtain orthography from orthography. Later, people carved the words on the stone tablet on the board and then spread them. Du Fu, a great poet in the Tang Dynasty, once said in his poem: "The monument of Yishan was burned by wildfire, and the jujube was fat and twisted." This is similar to block printing.
In the Tang Dynasty, seal cutting and rubbing gradually developed and merged, resulting in block printing. On the 4th year of Tang Muzong Changqing1February 10, namely 65438+825 10/2, the poet Yuan Zhen prefaced Bai Juyi's "Changqing Collection", saying that there were people everywhere in Yangzhou and Yuezhou at that time, Bai Juyi and his own poems. "Moeller" is being printed. This is the earliest block printing record in the existing literature. In 836 AD, Tang Wenzong, according to the report of Su Feng, the ambassador of Dongchuan, ordered the prohibition of private engraving of calendars. Su Feng said in the report: "Before the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China Tiantai invites the promulgation of a new almanac every year, privately printed almanac has spread all over the world." It can be seen that there were many people engaged in block printing at that time. 1900 Among the books found in the Thousand Buddha Cave in Dunhuang County, Gansu Province, there is a volume of the Diamond Sutra printed in block printing. At the end of the volume, it is entitled "Xian Tong made it by Wang Jun for his second wife on April 15th, 9th". Xian Tong nine years, namely in 868 AD. This is the earliest printed matter with exact date found in the world at present. This book is in the form of a piece of paper, about 1.6 feet long, and consists of seven printed sheets. In front is a picture of a door, which shows Sakyamuni talking about a tree in a lonely garden. The rest are printed in the full text of the Diamond Sutra. The graphics and text of this paper are very beautiful, and the carving technique is exquisite and simple, which shows that the printing technology at that time was quite proficient.
With the rapid increase in the variety and quantity of printing, it takes considerable manpower and material resources to engrave a board every time a book is printed. Therefore, it is proposed to seek a simpler and more economical printing technology. By the late Tang Dynasty, thousands of Buddha statues had been repeatedly printed with a Buddha seal by hand. In the past, archaeological teams from Britain, France, Germany, Japan and other countries found a large number of these thousands of Buddha axes in China and Xinjiang. The British Museum has a hand scroll with a total length of 17 feet, or about 5. 18 meters, on which 468 Buddha statues are printed. In addition, in the process of lettering, it is inevitable that typos will be engraved. It is a pity and a waste to engrave a wrong word and waste a board. The clever craftsman came up with a remedy, which is to dig out the wrong words with a chisel and then carve them with a piece of wood of the same size to make up. All these provide experience and reference for the invention of movable type printing. Thus, although movable type printing is Bi Sheng's personal invention and creation, it really embodies the wisdom of many laborers in past dynasties.