Bi Sheng

Timeline

1. c. 970–1020Huainan · Huainan CircuitBorn into a commoner family in Huainan, with no record of imperial examination service or official career. In his youth he likely trained in the printing workshops of the Jianghuai region, where woodblock printing was already widespread, accumulating the craft experience that later led him to replace whole-block carving with individual movable characters.
2. c. 1020–1040Huainan · Huainan CircuitUnder Emperor Renzong, the book-printing industry in Huainan and Bianjing flourished. Bi Sheng, a commoner artisan, worked within this network, becoming familiar with clay, firing, and type-setting procedures, which provided the technical prerequisites for the movable-type method.
3. 1041–1048Bianjing or Huainan · Northern SongDuring the Qingli era he carved characters in clay, fired them to harden them, arranged them by rhyme in wooden trays, fixed them with an adhesive compound, and printed with ink; after printing, the compound was melted and the type disassembled. Shen Kuo recorded the method in detail, also describing an iron plate as thin as a coin's rim and the recipe for the compound.
4. c. 1048–1051Huainan · Huainan CircuitAfter Bi Sheng's death, the clay movable type came into the possession of Shen Kuo's younger brother. The method did not immediately replace woodblock printing, but was preserved through Dream Pool Essays, becoming the earliest recorded starting point of the history of Chinese movable-type printing.