Historical Figures

Bi Sheng

Citation Formats

General Reference

History Atlas. "Bi Sheng." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://history.interactiveatlas.org/historical-figures/bi-sheng.

APA Style

History Atlas. (n.d.). Bi Sheng. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://history.interactiveatlas.org/historical-figures/bi-sheng

BibTeX

@misc{historyatlas-bi-sheng,
  author = {History Atlas},
  title = {Bi Sheng},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://history.interactiveatlas.org/historical-figures/bi-sheng},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

A Chinese artisan of the Northern Song dynasty credited with inventing movable type printing between 1039 and 1048, during the reign of Emperor Renzong. He formed individual characters from sticky clay cut as thin as the edge of a coin, baked them hard, and set them into an iron frame on an iron plate coated with a mixture of pine resin, wax and paper ashes; gently heating the plate softened the adhesive so the type could be pressed flat and set for printing, with multiple type sets used in alternation to speed production. His method is recorded by the polymath Shen Kuo in the Dream Pool Essays, written after Bi Sheng's death.

Facts

Disputed

Birth Year

972 1

Only his death in 1051 is precisely attested in the primary source (Shen Kuo Dream Pool Essays); 972 is the approximate birth year usually given from the traditional biographical range of 972-1051.

Death Year

1051 1

Role

Inventor of movable type printing 1

Cross-Tradition Connections

In Era

The Post-Classical and Medieval Period

Related To

The Printing Revolution

Bi Sheng clay movable type (Song dynasty, 1039-1048) predates and is the earliest attested movable-type printing; the printing revolution entity models the later, larger-scale transformation the technology made possible, most visibly after Gutenberg independent European development.

Source Wikipedia: Bi Sheng

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