"Oh, I think it's time to embrace the exciting challenges presented to us by the Century of the Fruitbat," said the Bursar.

"We...that's the one we're just about to leave, sir."

"Then it's high time we embraced them, don't you think?"

"Good point, sir."

This summer Leah Price, David Tate and I went to The Arm, a letterpress shop in Brooklyn, New York, to print some broadsides for the Rutger’s Book Initiative--where I am currently working as research assistant. I invite you to know more of Daniel Gardiner’s work. We spent the day printing in a Vandercook press! I hope we can come back soon and make more printed materials for our upcoming events, workshops and classes. 

The Chinese invent movable type

If you’re printing something with words, like a poster or an announcement or 95 Theses, every letter of every word needs to be carved out of your wood or linoleum block. Carving blocks for pages of an entire book is a king-sized headache. Way over in China in the ad 1000s, printers got tired of having to carve every stinkin’ character on a block. One printer, Bi Sheng, thought: “Why not make…

So, Gutenberg Didn’t Actually Invent the Printing Press: On the Unsung Chinese and Korean History of Movable Type. - M. Sophia Newman, LitHub.

“But the lengthy book would have required an impossibly large number of woodblocks, so Choe came up with an alternative. Building on earlier Chinese attempts to create movable type, he adapted a method that had been used for minting bronze coins to cast 3-dimensional characters in metal. Then he arranged these pieces in a frame, coated them with ink, and used them to press sheets of paper. When he was done, he could reorganize the metal characters, eliminating the need to persistently chisel blocks. It was faster—to a certain extent. He completed the project in 1250 AD.

Perhaps it should be Choe Yun-ui whose name we remember, not Gutenberg’s.”