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Movable type in China
Posted by sethurion in
30 Oct 2003 — 7:15pm
30 Oct 2003 — 7:15pm
I'm currently teaching English in China, and as part of a series of lectures on 'ideas that changed how the western world thinks', I'm working on one about the invention of movable type. What I can't find (in English anyway) is the history of the use of this technology in China. If anyone has any pertinant information (when, where, size of collections, distribution, etc...) please help.
I am intentionally avoiding using the term "printing press" as there is some dispute here as to when and where it was invented.
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30 Oct 2003 — 7:22pm
There are about 4 paragraphs about the invention of movable type in China in Philip Meggs' A History of Graphic Design. I'm on my way out right now, but I can type them & send them to you tomorrow if they'd be helpful. If you have access to the book, I believe chapter 2 deals with Asia. IIRC, Pi Sheng was a Chinese chemist and invented movable type during the middle of the 11th century.
30 Oct 2003 — 9:22pm
Twitchett, Denis. Printing and publishing in medieval China. 1983
Carter, Thomas Francis, The invention of printing in China and its spread westward. 1930s?
See also Part 1 of Volume 5 of Science and civilisation in China edited by Joseph Needham and Tsien Tsuen-Hsuin (Cambridge, 1985).
Despite the title of Carter's book, I'm not sure that any solid evidence exists to link the invention of moveable type in China to that in Europe. Rather, these seem to be independent inventions.
30 Oct 2003 — 9:40pm
AFAIK: The Chinese printed from large wooden blocks of complete pages way before anybody else. But it was the Koreans who (in the 14th century, I believe) first printed from movable type.
hhp
30 Oct 2003 — 11:30pm
I think that the Diamond Sutra was the first printed book - from wood blocks as hhp says - around the 8th or 9th century. Well before movable type.
31 Oct 2003 — 7:01am
J.Ben Lieberman in 'Types of Typefaces':
What Guttenberg invented was a combination of processes and materials: he found a way to cast metal type with precision and in quantity; he found an ink that would stick to metal (as Chinese ink could not); he contrived a "chase" to hold the letters to provide the tremendous pressure the sticky ink needed; he devised a way to deliver the printing stock (paper) without smudging, and to allow "register" or uniform placement of each sheet. All of these things had to be accomplished--and put together--before the new kind of printing could be done. ...Furthermore, he did it at the time... when there was enough demand for printing to motivate moneyed men to invest in the work and materials.
31 Oct 2003 — 7:14am
Who else in here now associates the term 'movable type' with a robust blogging application first and lead/wood type second? ;o)
31 Oct 2003 — 7:56am
Lieberman's description sounds like something you'd write in a last ditch attempt to prevent people from realizing that Gutenberg really invented nothing of relevance first. The Koreans did. Just like Columbus didn't discover America (nevermind that there were people there already), he was one of the last to get there.
hhp
31 Oct 2003 — 7:58am
From Meggs
31 Oct 2003 — 8:08am
Also from Meggs
31 Oct 2003 — 11:14am
Mr. Colombus actually went to Iceland to study accounts on travels to Wineland before going west...
I heard somewhere that the Chinese started out with movable type but abandoned it for whole carved 'page-blocks'. But it sounds unlikely.
14 Nov 2003 — 12:03pm
Seth
The Toppan Printing Museum in Tokyo issued a beautifully illustrated catalog in 2000 titled _Printing in the Edo Period: Ieyasu: Typographic Man_. This is still in print and available from them.
It was essentially put together to counter Western claims and does a very good job of it. Chinese, Japanese, and Korean methods of casting letterforms are thoroughly examined. Photographs reveal the casting molds, cast characters, etc.
Many earlier cultures cast coins and medallions and the similar in like molds. As did the Europeans. It just never occurred to the latter to make the leap. But when they did they had several great advantages over those that gone before: very advanced and progressive "mechanics" (the idea, not the job description!!!), manufactured interchangable parts and tools (and the marketing for it), an intense knowledge of metallurgy (thanks to the alchemists), and, of course, a very easily reproducable letterform (that of the textura) and a written language that had been compressed into a very small number of characters.
Stamping and casting techniques go back as far as the beginnings of written languages (repeatable stamping can be found in cave paintings), but the roads traveled were clearly separated and seem not to have crossed. The techniques of writing and those that would have allowed the exact reproduction of letterform (with some exception, such as the Phaistos stone) were ideas not put together until relatively late in the historical model.
Gerald
14 Nov 2003 — 12:48pm
Gerald, I'm interested in whether you think Lieberman got it right in my quote of him above. His view, I believe, was that Guttenberg didn't invent any of the parts of his system, but the invention was the system itself that he assembled and structured out of existing technology.
The innovation - which then spread like wildfire - was the system, not any piece of it. And this system also did not exist in the far east, though many parts of it did.
14 Nov 2003 — 1:20pm
"Lieberman's description sounds like something you'd write in a last ditch attempt to prevent people from realizing that Gutenberg really invented nothing of relevance first. The Koreans did. Just like Columbus didn't discover America (nevermind that there were people there already), he was one of the last to get there."
Hrant
Gutenberg nor any of the early printers of the incunabula ever claimed to have "invented" mechanical writing. They had seen Asian currency. The word used was "perfected," to mean "improved on." Invention is a later historical term.
Nor did Columbus' claim to have found a land that was not previously known (terra incognito) to Europeans mean that he somehow invented it and its peoples into existence.
He and many other Europeans knew something was there. Based on previous ocean expeditions it was clear to earlier navigators that a land mass must have existed right where Columbus found it. There were "speculative" maps of such available to Columbus. He, in fact, used them, deceivingly, to deliberately reduce his supply request to get approval for financing. He knew approximately how far to go, and supplied only as much as needed to get there.
He wasn't trying to prove the Earth was round or even trying to find the Asian landfall. Or to claim or invade new lands for his benefactors. I have read his "letter" on the discovery (the first "news" ever put to print on European presses) and his diaries. This man was hardly a conquistidor. He did not share the subsequent European political agenda in regard to the "discovery."
Gerald
14 Nov 2003 — 1:46pm
William
Yes, I believe that would be correct. But just as popular history distorts the reality of "the invention of printing," so to it may have distorted the identity of the "inventor" as well.
We only really know, from any documented evidence, that Gutenberg was involved in various projects (that somehow involved the idea of printing) for some twenty years before the publication of the Bible. It is assumed from these that he did come up with the adjustable type casting mold. And it can be assumed, from the legal documentation regarding the contracting of the Bible, that he had something to do with outfitting the presses and assembling the preliminary materials necessary for the printing of it. Nothing much more than that.
Likely there were several people working on the similar idea of producing a form of mechanical writing. There are unidentifiable artifacts (experiments?) in existence. In regard to the Bible itself, the significant contributions of Fust and, particularly, Schoeffer (a trained copyist) seem to have been driven down by popular history. Yet the book is so perfect in its production that it seems a bit odd that a mechanical wizard would be attributed to its printing when the ability to design a highly sophisticated typeface, and develop the composition for a book would likely have been beyond his skill and knowledge. Renaissance man or no, there is just so much one can master. The previous and later printing that can be conceivably "attributed" to Gutenberg, bear none of the hallmarks of the Bible printing (with the exception of the unique ink formulation).
Gerald
14 Nov 2003 — 1:59pm
Hello, yes I'm listening.
Bi Sheng invented clay movable type in the 11th century in China. His process is documented in detail Mengxi Bitan by Shen Kuo, a Sung essayist. The Koreans were the first people to use tin type. Don't have time right now, but will explanin in more details later!
14 Nov 2003 — 9:55pm
If Gutenberg can be credited with a novel invention -- not a new concept, but a new device -- it is probably the European type mould. Of course, type moulds of some kind must have existed in Asia, but I've never seen one or a picture of one. Indeed, pictures of European moulds are very few in number, and only a handful of later renaissance examples survive. So rare is their depiction in illustrations of the type making process that it is assumed that, like the equally rare counterpunches, the moulds were a trade secret.
I've seen the Diamond Sutra several times, and it is very beautiful, but certainly not as well printed as Gutenberg's 42-line Bible. The use of the term 'perfected' in describing Gutenberg's contribution is apt.
In terms of inventing a 'system', the contribution of Fust & Schoeffer is often overlooked: they invented the system we call publishing, i.e. the production and marketing of books.
14 Nov 2003 — 11:51pm
"In terms of inventing a 'system', the contribution of Fust & Schoeffer is often overlooked: they invented the system we call publishing, i.e. the production and marketing of books."
John
I don't know that this is quiet accurate. The making and selling of books was fairly well established, and had been for some time, otherwise there would have been no "potential" to that little ad hoc project. But the printed book certainly opened up the market possibilities, both high and low. The Aldine work is more often credited as the first significant publishing effort, at least, in the way we know it today.
Gerald
15 Nov 2003 — 1:36pm
The Aldine contribution was to make books that were more generally affordable. I'm thinking in terms of the infrastructure of a nascent publishing industry, as seen in the early Frankfurt bookfairs and which is still pretty much the same structure -- in the same place even -- today.
15 Nov 2003 — 2:37pm
John
When did the Frankfurt bookfairs begin?
Aldus was a bit more than that though... He also made smaller sized books for a speculative market, printed in languages other than Latin, introduced a slew of informational design elements (most of which are standard in books today), begin printing classical Greek works, scientific materials, etc. He is actually considered the first of the scholar-printers.
Much of the earlier incunabula was commissioned or directed at an existant and clearly defined market. Don't know that this makes much of a definitional distinction. But I recall that the 42-line Bible itself might have been a commission of the Church; as it seems to have been financed by it and most copies were dispersed to various elements of the Church upon completion of the project. I know there were copies available for sale to the established book market though as Fust apparently died of the Black Plague on a selling trip.
I guess this could or could not lend some credance to the idea of it being a publishing venture of sorts. Though one can easily say that even the wood block playing card printers, who existed for some great long time prior to Gutenberg, could be considered publishers.
Gerald
15 Nov 2003 — 5:48pm
Gerald, I wan't intending to downplay Aldus' contribution, only trying to distinguish his contribution to the publishing model from his contribution to typography. You are correct about the importance of the pocket editions, printing in the vernacular and Greek, etc.
I don't know what the date of the first Frankfurt bookfair was, but I remember being struck in a book I was reading by the fact that within Gutenberg's own lifetime this recognisable publishing industry was in place. Most likely it was, as you suggest, built on top of a pre-existing market for manuscript books, and perhaps the Frankfurst fair existed in some form before the early printer-publishers began travelling across Europe both selling their books and buying manuscripts for new ones. I didn't claim that Fust & Schoeffer were the first publishers: I said that they appear to have been instrumental in creating a system for producing and distributing books that is recognisable in publishing to this day.
31 Oct 2003 — 8:20am
Mr. Keith Tam could probably help out quite a bit. Keith are you listening?
http://keithtam.net/