louis marius moyroud played the leading role in perfecting movable type for printing.
who played the leading role in perfecting movable type for printing?
louis marius moyroud
although wang's "nong shu" was mostly printed by use of woodblock printing, his innovation of wooden movable type soon became popularly used in the region of anhui. wang's wooden movable type was used to print the local gazetteer paper of jingde city, which incorporated the use of 60,000 written characters organized on revolving tables. during the year of 1298, roughly one hundred copies of this were printed by wooden movable type in a month's time. following in the footsteps of wang, in 1322 the magistrate of fenghua, zhejiang province, named ma chengde, printed confucian classics with movable type of 100,000 written characters on needed revolving tables. the process of metal movable type was also developed in joseon korea by the 13th century, while metal movable type was not pioneered in china until the ming dynasty (1368–1644) printer hua sui used bronze movable type in 1490. although metal movable type became available in china during the ming period, wooden movable type persisted in common use even until the 19th century. after that point, the european printing press machine first pioneered by johannes gutenberg in the 15th century became the mainstay and standard in china and for the most part the global community until the advent of digital printing and the modern computer printer.
wang zhen (inventor)
the movable type invented by bi sheng was ultimately trumped by the use of woodblock printing due to the limitations of the enormous chinese character writing system, yet movable type printing continued to be used and was improved in later periods. the yuan dynasty scholar-official wang zhen (fl. 1290–1333) implemented a faster typesetting process, improved bi's baked-clay movable type character set with a wooden one, and experimented with tin-metal movable type. the wealthy printing patron hua sui (1439–1513) of the ming dynasty established china's first metal movable type (using bronze) in 1490. in 1638 the beijing gazette switched their printing process from woodblock to movable type printing. yet it was during the qing dynasty that massive printing projects began to employ movable type printing. this includes the printing of sixty-six copies of a 5,020 volume long encyclopedia in 1725, the "gujin tushu jicheng" ("complete collection of illustrations and writings from the earliest to current times"), which necessitated the crafting of 250,000 movable type characters cast in bronze. by the 19th century the european style printing press replaced the old chinese methods of movable type, while traditional woodblock printing in modern east asia is used sparsely and for aesthetic reasons.
song dynasty