Movable type printing was used in China and Korea before Johannes Gutenberg’s creation in the mid-15th century. The Jikji, printed in Korea in 1377, is the world’s oldest book printed with movable metal type. The technique was used to print currency and government documents in China and Korea. The Jikji was printed using bronze cast elements, similar to Gutenberg’s method. Only the last volume survived and is now housed at the National Library of France.
You may think that Johannes Gutenberg’s creation of movable metal type in the mid-15th century that facilitated fast, quality reproductions of text marked a technological breakthrough. But that’s not the whole story. Long before Gutenberg became the first European to use movable type, the printing technique was being used in China and Korea.
The Chinese were using movable type to print currency and government documents centuries before, and it was used in Korea to create the Jikji, the world’s oldest extant book printed with movable metal type, during the Goryeo Dynasty in the the late 14th century. This anthology of Buddhist priests’ Zen teachings was printed in 1377, predating the Gutenberg Bible (42-line Bible) 78 years.
Printing a page of history:
The printing technique using bronze cast elements was similar to Gutenberg’s. In Korea, this method was originally used to mint coins.
Most of the Jikji has been lost to history, and only the last volume has survived. It’s now housed at the National Library of France, though you can see a digitized copy online.
The last page of the Jikji, which originally totaled 307 chapters, indicates that it was printed using metal type at Heungdeok temple in Cheongju.
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