Bi Sheng (? -about 105 1) inventor of the northern song dynasty. Huizhou (now Shexian County, Anhui Province) people. Inventor of movable type printing. China was the first country to invent printing technology. The early printing method was to engrave pictures and texts on wooden boards and print them with ink. At present, this method is still used in the watermark painting of wooden boards, which is collectively called "engraving printing technology". The predecessor of block printing is the popular seal cutting in BC and the rubbings of inscriptions that appeared in the fifth century. After the emergence of production technologies such as papermaking and ink making, rigid printing was gradually invented. By the Tang Dynasty, rigid printing had become very popular in China, and spread to Korea, Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Iran and other countries, affecting Africa and Europe. After 1 1 century, with the development of social production, there have been many major reforms and inventions in printing. During the Song Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty (A.D. 104 1), Bi Sheng initiated the clay type edition, which made the printing of books more convenient. According to Shen Kuo's Meng Qian Bi Tan, Bi Sheng invented lettering on a piece of cement, one word at a time, which became movable type after hard burning. Before typesetting, coat a layer of paper ash mixed with turpentine and wax on the iron plate with iron frame, arrange the movable type on it in turn, heat it to melt the wax slightly, and flatten the words with a flat plate. Because the clay characters are on the iron plate, they can be printed like engraving. In addition, he also studied the typesetting of wooden movable type. Movable type can be used many times, which is more economical and convenient than full-page carving.