Shen Kuo · Science
Four hundred years before Gutenberg, an obscure Chinese commoner named Bi Sheng invented movable type from baked clay. We know this for one reason only: Shen Kuo, a high official, thought a craftsman’s ingenuity worth recording. His notebook is the sole surviving account.
You learned that Shen Kuo’s Dream Pool Essays contains the only surviving record of Bi Sheng’s clay movable type (c. 1040s) - describing the baked-clay characters, the iron composing frame, and the resin bed - and that this act of a scholar documenting a commoner’s craft is itself significant. Explai…
Leads to Francis Bacon.
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