And in the south, there will be many new varieties, which will allow for a lot of variety. Nowadays, there is very little handmade paper. It is basically all machine-made paper. As you can see, the paper nowadays is basically white, with only a small amount of unbleached paper being natural color.

Everyone in Wanchao was stunned. They didn't expect that paper could have such a long history of development.

“This is probably the development of papermaking. I won’t go into detail about its spread and development abroad. I’ll show you the information later.

Let's look at this now, typography.

I just mentioned a sentence. I don't know if you noticed it. The emergence of woodblock printing stimulated the re-development of the paper industry. So, what is the relationship between woodblock printing and printing?"

Zhou Jia showed two pictures. One was a complete wooden board with densely packed characters engraved on it, and the other was a picture of small wooden blocks with independent characters engraved on each block.

"Printing can be divided into two types: woodblock printing, which is the process of carving all the patterns on a wooden board and then printing them; and movable type printing, which is the process of using small blocks of type that can be arranged and combined at will.

Before the invention of printing, many things had to be copied by hand, but copying by hand was time-consuming and laborious, and it was easy to make mistakes. So what should we do?

Zhou Jia put up another picture, which showed a seal.

"The earliest inspiration for printing came from this thing, or more precisely, the seal. Seals existed as early as the pre-Qin period, but back then, they might have only contained a few characters, representing names and official titles. Later, after Your Majesty conquered the six kingdoms and unified the country, you created something that would become a bloody battle for all men in later generations!"

I was inexplicably reminded of the six kings who had been destroyed.

Anyway, all she cares about all the time is her Majesty, so why would she care about their feelings?

Unlike the rulers of the six kingdoms, Ying Zheng's first reaction was that Zhou Jia was talking about the position of emperor that he had created.

Chinese

Liu Che chuckled twice, "Sure enough, she never forgets to bring up her Majesty and talk about him all the time."

He is not jealous.

real.

snort.

However, his eyes also fell on the jade seal on his desk. He played with it in his hands, "This thing is really enough to make people fight for it."

The emperors of various dynasties also had complicated expressions when looking at the jade seals in their hands.

"This thing is called a seal, because His Majesty said that from now on, other people's seals can only be called seals, and only His Majesty's can be called seals. So later on, the seal became exclusive to the emperor. There are some stories behind the jade seal. I won't give a lecture tomorrow, so I will tell you about this jade seal.

After discovering that rubbing can greatly reduce manpower and guarantee accuracy, everyone started using rubbing to record things, such as stone carving. His Majesty used stone carvings to record his achievements. The one I know most about is the Yishan Stone Carving, which is what I'm currently practicing.

Zhou Jia smiled and put out the picture of the Yishan stone carvings.

Qin

Yingji laughed heartily, teasing the young Ying Zheng in his arms. He couldn't help but pinch his face and said, "I didn't expect our Zheng'er to be an emperor who would show off his achievements."

He thought that although Ying Zheng was domineering, he would not publicize his achievements everywhere. Unexpectedly, he would actually publicize his achievements everywhere. It was quite cute.

Yingji pinched the little Yingzheng without restraint, and he felt a little aggrieved. "Father, it hurts."

Ying Zhu and Ying Yiren felt very distressed watching this.

The older King Zheng of Qin and the First Emperor Zheng had no expression on their faces when they heard Zhou Jia's words, but their earlobes were slightly red.

The Qin people were even more proud and thought this was normal.

Their Majesties have made so many great achievements, so naturally they should all be recorded and passed down to future generations.

"After the emergence of rubbings, woodblock printing officially appeared around the Tang Dynasty.

The general process is that after writing, the side with the words is pasted on the board to carve the words, and the reverse characters are carved into raised positive text. The blank parts are removed, and the other wood chips are removed before the engraving board is completed. When printing, the brush is dipped in ink on the plate, and the paper is pasted on it and lightly brushed with a small brush. Finally, the paper is lifted from the board and dried. This is the complete process.

But there is a problem with this. It takes time to make the plate, and carving is very laborious. If you write this article today, you need to carve the layout for this article. If you write that article tomorrow, you need to carve other layouts. This is too troublesome.

Thus, movable type printing emerged. In fact, movable type printing has existed for a long time. When Your Majesty unified the weights and measures, he used a wooden stamp to print a 40-character imperial edict on a ceramic scale. Some archaeologists believe this was the beginning of movable type printing, but it was not widely used.

However, it is generally believed that Bi Sheng of the Northern Song Dynasty invented movable type printing. Unfortunately, his invention was not valued by the emperor and society. Even after his death, movable type printing was not promoted, and his clay movable type was not preserved. Fortunately, this movable type printing was passed down.

Let me introduce you, Bi Sheng was a commoner, not a prince or general, but he still left his name in history with his inventions. Dear emperors, please do not look down on your so-called strange and lewd skills. Sometimes, these things you look down on may actually greatly facilitate the lives of the people.

Northern Song Dynasty

Bi Sheng, who was working as a woodblock engraver in a bookstore, paused.

Is it him?

"Bi Sheng? Miss Zhou Jia is not talking about you, Bi Sheng!"

The colleagues working next to him looked at Bi Sheng in shock, with envy and a bit of jealousy in their eyes.

Bi Sheng laughed, "How is that possible? Maybe he just happens to have the same name as me. Let's get to work."

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