| T: | 畢昇 |
| S: | 毕昇 |
| P: | Bì Shēng |
| W: | Pi4 Sheng1 |
| J: | Bat1 Sing1 |
| Y: | Bāt Sīng |
Bi Sheng (; 972–1051 AD) was a Song dynasty Chinese artisan, engineer, and inventor of the world's first movable type technology. Bi Sheng's system used fired clay tiles, one for each Chinese character, and was invented between 1039 and 1048. Printing was one of the Four Great Inventions. Because Bi was a commoner, not an educated person, little is known about his life besides this invention.[1]
The invention of Bi Sheng was recorded only in the Dream Pool Essays by Chinese scholar-official and polymath Shen Kuo (1031–1095). The book provides a detailed description of the technical details of Bi Sheng's invention of movable type printing:
In the next few centuries movable type technology was seldom mentioned or described. Wooden movable-type printing became wide-spread in the Qing dynasty but did not replace block printing, probably because of the expense of creating a font of so many pieces or the low cost of a copyist. The government official Wang Zhen (fl. 1290–1333) improved Bi Sheng's clay types by innovation through the wood, as his process increased the speed of typesetting as well.[2] Later in China by 1490 bronze movable type was developed by the wealthy printer Hua Sui (1439–1513).
Bisheng Subdistrict (Chinese: 畢昇社區) in Wenquan, Huanggang, Hubei is named for Bi Sheng. The Bi Sheng crater located in the LAC-7 quadrant near the northern pole on the far side of the Moon was named after Bi Sheng by the IAU in August 2010.[3]