Death of Bi Sheng, Inventor of Movable Type

1051

In a workshop somewhere in Song China, the artisan Bi Sheng died, leaving behind an invention the world had not yet learned to want. His fired-clay characters - each one a single word, pressed into an iron frame and inked - had made printing modular for the first time. The technology would sleep for centuries before metal type and European ambition gave it thunderous second life.