Printing

Block-printing was first applied to the production of books at the end of the T'ang dynasty. The supposed inventor was Feng Tao [q.v.) who died a.d. 954, though it is also a erted that the invention can be traced to the Sui dynasty (581-618). Six years after Feng Tag's death the Sung dynasty was established and the printing of books from blocks became common. The first authentic account of printing from movable types dates it at the beginning of the eleventh century, but the proce did not then pa into common use. 474 K'ang Hsi, at the suggestion of the Jesuits, ordered about 250,000 types to be cut in copper. The font disappeared through the carele ne and cupidity of those in charge; Ch'ien Lung ordered it to be recut and it was much used during his reign. It is stated that in 1850 a Fatshan bookseller cast three fonts, and having begun by printing lottery tickets i went on to an edition of Ma Tuan-lin in 120 volumes. Rebels looted his plant in 1855, and foreign surgeons extracted ten types from the wounds of the loyalists. The first fonts of Chinese type made by foreigners were cut by P. P. Thoms in 1815, for the East India Company's office in Macao, for the object of printing Mourison's dictionary. A small font was cast the same year at Serampore. In 1834, at Pauthier's request, Legrand in Paris cut 3,000 matrices'. A set of these was brought to China in 1844 and was much used by the American Mi ion Pre . The Rev. S. Dyer began cutting steel punches in 1838 and cut 1,845 before his death in 1843. His work was completed by R. Cole. Williams: Movable Types for Printing Chinese, Chinese Recorder, 1875, and Middle Kingdom, p. 600; Jtjlien: Industries de l' Empire cTiinois, p. 152.