Bi Sheng Quotes

For one thing, Gutenberg didn’t invent movable type—a Chinese artisan named Bi Sheng did, using clay and ash, three and a half centuries before Gutenberg was born. For another, information wants to be free, but so does misinformation. The printing press empowered such religious progressives as Erasmus and John Calvin; it also empowered hucksters, war profiteers, terrorists, and bigots.* Nor did the printing press eliminate the problem of gatekeepers. It merely shifted the problem

Before Gutenberg The Dec. 12 Book World review of the novel “Gutenberg’s Apprentice” [“Capturing a long-past transformative movement,” Style] said that Johannes Gutenberg “is often imagined as a lone Renaissance genius who singlehandedly invented the technology of movable type.” Indeed, that Eurocentric view ignores well-documented Asian history. Bi Sheng invented movable type (first wooden, then ceramic) about 1040 in China. Movable metal type was developed in Korea , where the oldest book printed with metal type was published in 1377. Gutenberg was the first person in Europe to use movable metal type in the 1450s. Daniel Dzurek, Washington