Genealogical Preservations and the Moveable Type — Lilian Zhang

Chinese printing processes date back to the eleventh century, during the Song dynasty, in which arts, literature, and technology flourished. [1]. Even though printing had existed in China for hundreds of years, the eleventh century brought forth printing of materials other than religious texts and divinations.

Origin

During the northern Song dynasty (960-1127), movable type was used exclusively in Northern Zhejiang Province, corroborated by the fact that ceramics were also produced in the same area and local printing activities existed for that purpose. [1] The use of “double plates of metal” (二板铁), as documented in the Collected Works of Mr. Binglü [2], refers to the two metal trays within which the types are placed to speed up the process of alternating the type positioning and subsequent printing.

Diffusion of the Movable Type

Large disparity between the speed of diffusion of the moveable type and their popularity in terms of use between Europe and Asian countries such as China. This difference is primarily attributed to the “limitless repertory of chinese characters,” as there are more than 8000 common characters. [3] In his book “Books and Printing in Sung China”, Ming-sun Poon discusses that Chinese printing presses need a font of 100,000 sorts while Western types, with upper and lower case letters, numerals, signs, and punctuations, require no more than 150 sorts. [4]