When people were in Qin, Shennong reincarnated at the beginning

Chapter 56: Movable Type Printing

Since we want to open up the wisdom of the people and popularize culture, paper alone is not enough.

The key to popularizing culture is to turn blank paper with words into books with words.

As we all know, no word will do.

Great Qin is the first unified empire in Chinese history. Great Qin has a total area of ​​340 million square kilometers, starting from Liaodong in the east, reaching the plateau in the west, extending to the south of Lingnan in the south, and reaching Yinshan in the north.

On a land of 340 million square kilometers, there are 48 counties, 180 counties, and a population of nearly 3000 million.

Li Mu wants to spread the culture to these 48 counties, 180 counties, and a population of nearly 3000 million, which will require a large number of books.

And it is absolutely impractical to rely on copying so many books.Even if thousands or even tens of thousands of Confucian students were copying non-stop, he could not copy enough books for national education even if he broke the guard hand.

Why, in this era, culture has become something that only a few people can have.Even, in the subsequent dynasties, these families that mastered the culture even once became powerful families that could influence the change of imperial power.

There is no dynasty with a thousand years, but a family with a thousand years.The Kong family in Qufu can be said to have been handed down from a long time ago, from the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, and even to modern times.It is precisely because they have mastered the output of culture.

If the emperor wants to use people as officials to rule the world, he must find people who can read and write.Therefore, this also created such a small group of rubbish people. Mastering culture means mastering power.

In fact, the imperial examinations initiated during the Sui Dynasty did not fundamentally solve the problem of aristocrats.

Although the imperial examination system seems to have solved the problem of ordinary people's promotion, culture is in the hands of a few people, and most people can't afford to read books at all, and they don't want to study.

From this point of view, the imperial examination system is only a solution to the symptoms rather than the root cause. The real solution is to popularize education so that every citizen of Great Qin has the qualifications to receive education. This is the fundamental solution. problem.

The foundation of education lies in books.The root of books lies in paper and printing, and now Li Mu has solved the problem of paper.Paper is cheap to manufacture and can be produced in large quantities.

Now, as long as the printing problem is solved, it will lay a solid foundation for Li Mu's cultural empire plan.

Papermaking, printing, gunpowder, and the compass are the four great inventions of the Chinese nation.Among the four great inventions, the greatest is papermaking and printing.

The reason why humans are stronger than animals is precisely because humans have writing.Human beings with writing can record everything about themselves on paper, and then hand it over to the next generation.Human newborns are born to learn from the experience and wisdom of their predecessors, and words make human beings a race standing on the shoulders of giants.

In this way, passed down from generation to generation, words make human beings stronger from generation to generation.

Animals have no words, and their experience cannot be passed on to the next generation, so they are caught in a cycle of reincarnation.

Papermaking, printing, and compulsory education, these are the three-piece suit Li Mu prepared for his own cultural empire.

Although it is not obvious to implement nine-year compulsory education in the era of low productivity in Daqin, this nine-year compulsory education was shortened to three-year compulsory education.

Carry out a simple education for every citizen of the Great Qin Dynasty, let them learn to read and write, and then teach them in accordance with their aptitude.

Papermaking, printing, compulsory education, the combination of these three things is the future of Daqin.As the saying goes, a strong youth makes a country strong.

These days, craftsmen are busy making paper, and Li Mu is naturally not idle. He is personally leading a team to conduct research on printing.

Printing developed from block printing to movable type printing. Block printing first appeared in the Sui Dynasty, while movable type printing first appeared in the Song Dynasty.

Block printing is to carve a pickaxe on the board, and then apply ginger ink to the engraved block when printing, and then cover it with white characters. In this way, the characters are printed on the paper.

However, block printing has obvious disadvantages, that is, the content on each block is fixed.To print new content, it is necessary to carve a new block.Moreover, once one of the characters is severely worn, the entire engraving needs to be replaced.

Li Mu planned to skip woodblock printing directly and develop movable type printing.Movable type printing is to first make small square boxes similar to mahjong, and then carve all kinds of characters.When printing is required, first arrange all the blocks on the iron plate according to the underwear to be printed, and fix the surroundings.

Then smear ink on it, and print white paper on it, so that the content of one page is printed.

Compared with movable type printing and woodblock printing, his advantages are obvious.Block printing is a whole, and whenever a different content needs to be printed, a new block must be carved.Moreover, when a certain font on the engraving block is damaged, the entire engraving block will be scrapped.

And each block of movable type printing is a separate individual.If a certain font is damaged, only this one font needs to be replaced.Moreover, the same set of templates can print all the content that needs to be printed according to different arrangement sequences.

Xianyang, Daqin Ministry of Culture.

"Ha ha ha ha!"

"It's done, it's done!"

"Shangguoshi, it's done!" An old craftsman shouted excitedly, holding up the first page of words generated by printing.

In fact, movable type printing is not difficult. After some craftsmen have ideas, they can make movable type engraving blocks required by movable type printing.

In the whole engraving process, the most difficult thing is a character, the movable type block needed for a character engraving.

These mahjong-like movable type blocks are not engraved with normal characters, but inscribed characters.What is the word Yinwen? There is a word called Reversing Yin and Yang.

The ancients believed that yang is positive and yin is negative.Our normal fonts are naturally used by people in the world, and Yinwen is the characters used by the dead.That is to write the normal font upside down.

Only after the normal character is reversed and engraved and printed on paper, can the font be correct.If you are engraving, the printed font will be reversed.

Everyone knows that it is very powerful to memorize something backwards. In fact, it is also very powerful to carve a word upside down.

Li Mu took the page that had just been printed, and nodded secretly.The size of each word above can be said to be exactly the same. Sure enough, the craftsmanship of the ancients should not be underestimated. This is the real craftsman spirit.

(End of this chapter)