Movable type in China
Bi Sheng casts individual characters in clay
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Block printing was in use in China from the 8th century; the Diamond Sutra of 868 is the world's oldest dated printed book. Bi Sheng's movable type around 1040, and later metal type in Korea in the 13th century, thus predate Gutenberg by four centuries. That the revolution nonetheless broke out in Europe is usually explained by the small character set of an alphabet, by paper prices, by a growing readership of merchants and students, and by European presses being competing private enterprises.
For children
The Chinese printed books long before Europe. Bi Sheng made individual characters from fired clay that could be rearranged for each page. With tens of thousands of Chinese characters it was still cumbersome — an alphabet of 26 letters is far easier.
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Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org