Block Printing During The Song Dynasty

Imagine you being an author and having to make a new mold for each of your book’s pages. During the Song Dynasty, a man named Bi Sheng, created a system called, Movable Type Printing. This system came in place when Block Printing was around. During the Song Dynasty, authors started writing long scrolls and books. If authors wanted to publish their scroll or book, they would have to invest a lot of money and time. How did the Movable Type Printing change all of this? When an invention is made, it is made to solve a problem. In this case, the problem is the, Block Printing. This process is a very expensive and time consuming one. To ‘print’ a page, a block of wood would have to be carved specifically for that page. But, if u made a mistake while carving, the whole block would become useless. It all started between the 4th and 7th century AD, when wood block would be used for printing textiles. As time went on, Block Printing was being used to print Buddhist texts. By the 9th century, books and long scrolls were appearing in abundance. At the end of that same century, printing had spreads across all China, and had become common. Books that were printed included Confucian classics, Buddhists sculptures, dictionaries, mathematics, and other topics. So many books were being printed, that
This system worked by using the keys you wanted, pasting them on an iron surface, and then putting the page over the keys. All the keys/characters had to be carved into exact molds. After the molds were carved, they were put on a fire so that they could become hard and durable. Then, the clay was ready to be glued to an iron surface. The good thing about the Movable Type Printing is that afterwards that you have glued the keys, you can disassemble them, and can again be assembled back together. With this invention authors were able to publish their books faster. This invention also had a great impact on