From theQin dynasty(221-206BC),Chinese charactersdeveloped rapidly. A book titled Shuowen Jiezi that was written in the EasternHan Dynasty(25-220) contained 9,353 characters; and a book titled Yu Pian that was written in theNorthern and Southern Dynasties(386-589) contained more than 22,000 characters. With the development of Confucianism, Taoism, and various other scholars' thoughts, more and more works appeared.
China's population grew rapidly; at the end of theWestern Han Dynasty(206BC-24AD), the population had reached nearly 60 million, spurring a great demand by people for books to read. Therefore, a need for new technology (for making books) became urgent.
Thepaper's invention provided a kind of high- quality and cheap writing material for the society, which promoted the books' development to a certain degree. But the method of writing books by hands was not suitable for large books, thereby leading to a gap in cultural dissemination.
Under those situations, Chinese people invented theprintingtechnology, offering humanity's development a generous gift in the process.
Engraved Block Printing
1. Character-carving Skills
The skill of carving characters emerged very early. The oldest inscriptions were made on oracle bones such as animal bones and shells. Inscriptions onbronze wareflourished from theShang Dynastyto the WesternZhou Dynasty(16th century-771BC). Chinese characters were inscribed in clay molds before casting.
Carving characters on stones came even earlier. Symbol carvings on surfaces of cliffs have been traced back to extremely ancient times. The classics in great-sealscript and small-seal script were all carved on stones. TheXiping Stone Inscriptions of the Eastern Han (25-220) involved carving the Confucian classics in the clerical script onto 46 stone tables, totaling around 200,000 characters.
2. Engraved Block Printing
With the inventions of paper and ink, the stamper, an early form of engraved block printing, gradually became popular during theJin Dynasty (265-420). Block printing first appeared in theTang Dynasty(618-907). The text was first written on a piece of thin paper, and then glued face down onto a wooden plate. The characters were carved out to make a wood-block printing plate, which was used to print the text. Wood-block printing took a long time as a new block had to be carved for every page in a book.
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