what was movable type used for in china
Movable type
In 1298 , Wang Zhen ( 王 祯 / 王 禎 ) , a Yuan dynasty governmental official of Jingde County , Anhui Province , China , re-invented a method of making movable wooden types . He made more than 30,000 wooden movable types and printed 100 copies of Records of Jingde County ( 《 旌 德 縣志 》 ) , a book of more than 60,000 Chinese characters . Soon afterwards , he summarized his invention in his book A method of making moveable wooden types for printing books . Although the wooden type was more durable under the mechanical rigors of handling , repeated printing wore the character faces down , and the types could only be replaced by carving new pieces . This system was later enhanced by pressing wooden blocks into sand and casting metal types from the depression in copper , bronze , iron or tin . This new method overcame many of the shortcomings of woodblock printing . Rather than manually carving an individual block to print a single page , movable type printing allowed for the quick assembly of a page of text . Furthermore , these new , more compact type fonts could be reused and stored . The set of wafer - like metal stamp types could be assembled to form pages , inked , and page impressions taken from rubbings on cloth or paper . In 1322 , a Fenghua county officer Ma Chengde ( 馬 称 德 ) in Zhejiang , made 100,000 wooded movable types and printed the 43 - volume Daxue Yanyi ( 《 大學 衍 義 》 ) . Wooden movable types were used continually in China . Even as late as 1733 , a 2300 - volume Wuying Palace Collected Gems Edition ( 《 武英 殿 聚珍 版 叢書 》 ) was printed with 253,500 wooden movable types on order of the Yongzheng Emperor , and completed in one year .
In 1298 , Wang Zhen ( 王 祯 / 王 禎 ) , a Yuan dynasty governmental official of Jingde County , Anhui Province , China , re-invented a method of making movable wooden types . He made more than 30,000 wooden movable types and printed 100 copies of Records of Jingde County ( 《 旌 德 縣志 》 ) , a book of more than 60,000 Chinese characters . Soon afterwards , he summarized his invention in his book A method of making moveable wooden types for printing books . Although the wooden type was more durable under the mechanical rigors of handling , repeated printing wore the character faces down , and the types could only be replaced by carving new pieces . This system was later enhanced by pressing wooden blocks into sand and casting metal types from the depression in copper , bronze , iron or tin . This new method overcame many of the shortcomings of woodblock printing . Rather than manually carving an individual block to print a single page , movable type printing allowed for the quick assembly of a page of text . Furthermore , these new , more compact type fonts could be reused and stored . The set of wafer - like metal stamp types could be assembled to form pages , inked , and page impressions taken from rubbings on cloth or paper . In 1322 , a Fenghua county officer Ma Chengde ( 馬 称 德 ) in Zhejiang , made 100,000 wooded movable types and printed the 43 - volume Daxue Yanyi ( 《 大學 衍 義 》 ) . Wooden movable types were used continually in China . Even as late as 1733 , a 2300 - volume Wuying Palace Collected Gems Edition ( 《 武英 殿 聚珍 版 叢書 》 ) was printed with 253,500 wooden movable types on order of the Yongzheng Emperor , and completed in one year .