Bi Sheng

Bi Sheng ( Chinese  畢 昇  /  毕 昇 , Pinyin Bì Shēng , W.-G. Pi Sheng ; † 1052 ), a man of low descent, invented a method of printing with movable type between 1041 and 1048 in the Chinese Empire . Details about his life are not recorded.

His invention is described in detail by Shen Kuo in his work Mengxi Bitan ( 夢溪筆談 ; dt. "Brush entertainments on the dream stream"): Bi Sheng had made stamps from fired clay for the individual characters , which he used with a mixture of wax and resin Set up printing block.

To print, he put an iron frame on an iron plate and placed the stamps in it. When the frame was full, it made a printing block which he then heated until the paste [on the back of the letters] began to melt. With a board that he pressed to the front, he leveled the surface of the printing block so that it was smooth as if sanded.

He had several pieces of each character, and the frequently occurring twenty or more, in order to be prepared for repetitions on a page. He labeled unused characters and kept them in wooden boxes. (Lit. Tsien)

To use the characters again, the iron plate was heated again until the melting paste released the stamps again. However, Bi Sheng's ceramic letters were too sensitive for larger printing areas (Lit. Sohn).

Wang Zhen (1260–1330) therefore later used movable type made of wood , but printing with movable type did not catch on in China until the end of the 19th century. There is no material evidence of the practical use of Bi Sheng's invention, and the invention has been forgotten again.

The reason is obvious: The thousands of Chinese characters prevent the simple and quick assembly of printing plates in this way.

It was not until the end of the 17th century that European Jesuit missionaries, following the principle of Johannes Gutenberg, first printed books with movable type on Chinese soil on behalf of Emperor Kangxi .

The lunar crater Bi Sheng has been named after him since 2010.

literature

• Bhattacharjee, Edda: Bi Sheng and Gutenberg and the movable letters, in: Information - Wissenschaft & Praxis, 2001, Vol. 52, No. 1, pp. 37 - 40th DGI e. V., Frankfurt am Main, ISSN  1434-4653
• Tsien, Tsuen-Hsuin (1985). "Part one, vol.5", in Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China: Paper and Printing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Sohn, Pow-Key, "Early Korean Printing," Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 79, no. 2 (Apr. – Jun., 1959), pp.96-103 (100)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Chinese. Bi is the family name here, Sheng is the first name.