Bi Sheng

Printed with movable type made of fired clay; the inventor of movable type printing.

Life

Commoner Block Carver

Bi Sheng was an ordinary block carver of the Qingli era of the Northern Song who worked for years in the craft of woodblock printing. Printing at the time generally used whole carved blocks, one set of blocks per book, which required enormous carving work and was hard to alter; correcting a wrong character or reprinting different content consumed huge amounts of labor and materials.

Clay movable type

Around 1041 to 1048 he developed a method of carving characters in clay, firing them hard in a kiln, arranging them by rhyme, and setting them in type on an iron plate for printing. After printing, the type could be taken apart and reused, which greatly improved printing efficiency and made it easier to correct errors. This was the world's earliest movable type printing. Almost everything known about his life survives only thanks to Shen Kuo's account in the Dream Pool Essays.

Rediscovery

Movable type printing was continually improved by later generations, developing from clay type to wooden and metal type, and it profoundly affected the speed and cost of spreading knowledge. Because Bi Sheng himself was of humble status, the official histories barely mention him, and for a long time his invention was lumped into vague references to "Song dynasty printing." Only when modern scholars re-examined Shen Kuo's account did this artisan's specific contribution receive the recognition it deserves.

Legacy

The movable type printing invented by Bi Sheng predated Johannes Gutenberg's metal movable type in Europe by about four hundred years and was an important development in printing, one of ancient China's Four Great Inventions. Clay movable type did not replace woodblock printing in China, but its principle was carried on by later wooden and bronze movable type and spread to Korea and elsewhere. Whether there was a direct line of transmission between movable type printing and European printing remains unsettled among scholars.

Major works & achievements

• Invented clay movable type printing
• Devised storing type by rhyme and setting it on iron plates
• His deeds recorded in Shen Kuo's Dream Pool Essays

Did you know? In 1990 a gravestone inscribed with the name "Bi Sheng" was discovered in Yingshan, Hubei; scholars still debate whether it belongs to the same man.

Key dates

• 1041Began experimenting with movable type c. the Qingli era
• 1043Worked out how to carve and fire clay type
• 1045Movable-type printing gradually matured
• 1048Perfected dismantling and reusing set type
• 1051Died c. this year