Printing is one of the four great inventions in ancient China. In ancient times, although there were paper and books, the circulation of books depended on people's manual copying, which was slow and easy to make mistakes.
[block printing]
In the Tang Dynasty, people invented a method of engraving words on a whole board for printing, which is called engraving printing. This is much more convenient than manual copying. But engraving printing needs to carve a wood block on one side, and a book needs to carve many boards, which is time-consuming and a waste of human and material resources.
[movable type printing]
In the Northern Song Dynasty, a citizen named Bi Sheng invented movable type printing. Movable type printing is to carve words one by one with mastic, then prepare an iron plate, put loose grease, wax, paper ash, etc. on the iron plate, and then put an iron frame. The words arranged in the iron frame are a plate, and then bake them on the fire. When the wax and grease melt, flatten the plate with a flat plate, and then print when it is cold. After printing, remove the movable type and use it again. It prints fast and well.
Later, people made tin, copper and lead movable type, which can be used for many years. Moreover, the printing invented by China has also spread to many countries in the world.
Printing is one of the greatest cultural inventions of mankind. There is no doubt that printing was first invented by the Chinese.