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104-433: The Phaistos Disc or Phaistos Disk is a disk of fired clay from the island of Crete , Greece , possibly from the middle or late Minoan Bronze Age ( second millennium BC ), bearing a text in an unknown script and language. Its purpose and its original place of manufacture remain disputed. It is now on display at the archaeological museum of Heraklion . The name is sometimes spelled Phaestos or Festos . The disk

208-659: A Fenghua county officer Ma Chengde ( 馬称德 ) in Zhejiang, made 100,000 wooden movable types and printed the 43-volume Daxue Yanyi ( 《大學衍義》 ). Wooden movable types were used continually in China. Even as late as 1733, a 2300-volume Wuying Palace Collected Gems Edition ( 《武英殿聚珍版叢書》 ) was printed with 253,500 wooden movable types on order of the Qianlong Emperor , and completed in one year. A number of books printed in Tangut script during

312-426: A Yuan dynasty governmental official of Jingde County , Anhui Province , China, re-invented a method of making movable wooden types. He made more than 30,000 wooden movable types and printed 100 copies of Records of Jingde County ( 《旌德縣志》 ), a book of more than 60,000 Chinese characters . Soon afterwards, he summarized his invention in his book A method of making moveable wooden types for printing books . Although

416-457: A forgery or hoax , the disk is now generally accepted by archaeologists as authentic. This mysterious object captured the imagination of amateur and professional palaeographers , and many attempts have been made to decipher the code behind the disc's signs. While it is not clear that it is a script, most attempted decipherments assume that it is; most additionally assume a syllabary , others an alphabet or logography . The Phaistos Disc

520-454: A boat), or parts thereof (heads, hides, flowers). However, in most cases the precise nature of objects depicted is still unknown (as of 2023). The sign names assigned by scholars, in particular by Godart and the Unicode consortium, were rather arbitrary, often based on the slightest shape similarity. Symbol 21 (Godart's "COMB") was once conjectured to be a palace floorplan. However, this hypothesis

624-436: A body of text being reproduced with reusable characters: it may have been produced by pressing pre-formed hieroglyphic "seals" into the soft clay. A few authors even view the disc as technically meeting all definitional criteria to represent an early incidence of movable-type printing. Bones, shells, bamboo slips, metal tablets, stone tablets, silk, as well as other materials were previously used for writing. However, following

728-578: A drawer about 2 inches high, a yard wide, and about two feet deep, with many small compartments for the various letters and ligatures. The most popular and accepted of the job case designs in America was the California Job Case , which took its name from the Pacific coast location of the foundries that made the case popular. Traditionally, the capital letters were stored in a separate drawer or case that

832-575: A gel of orthosilicic acid ).) The clay minerals formed depend on the composition of the source rock and the climate. Acid weathering of feldspar -rich rock, such as granite , in warm climates tends to produce kaolin. Weathering of the same kind of rock under alkaline conditions produces illite . Smectite forms by weathering of igneous rock under alkaline conditions, while gibbsite forms by intense weathering of other clay minerals. There are two types of clay deposits: primary and secondary. Primary clays form as residual deposits in soil and remain at

936-836: A great capacity to take up water, and they increase greatly in volume when they do so. When dried, they shrink back to their original volume. This produces distinctive textures, such as mudcracks or "popcorn" texture, in clay deposits. Soils containing swelling clay minerals (such as bentonite ) pose a considerable challenge for civil engineering, because swelling clay can break foundations of buildings and ruin road beds. Clay minerals most commonly form by prolonged chemical weathering of silicate-bearing rocks. They can also form locally from hydrothermal activity. Chemical weathering takes place largely by acid hydrolysis due to low concentrations of carbonic acid , dissolved in rainwater or released by plant roots. The acid breaks bonds between aluminium and oxygen, releasing other metal ions and silica (as

1040-402: A major challenge in civil engineering . The defining mechanical property of clay is its plasticity when wet and its ability to harden when dried or fired. Clays show a broad range of water content within which they are highly plastic, from a minimum water content (called the plastic limit ) where the clay is just moist enough to mould, to a maximum water content (called the liquid limit) where

1144-477: A metal movable type system. Gutenberg, as a goldsmith , knew techniques of cutting punches for making coins from moulds. Between 1436 and 1450 he developed hardware and techniques for casting letters from matrices using a device called the hand mould . Gutenberg's key invention and contribution to movable-type printing in Europe, the hand mould, was the first practical means of making cheap copies of letterpunches in

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1248-592: A single page, movable type printing allowed for the quick assembly of a page of text. Furthermore, these new, more compact type fonts could be reused and stored. Wang Zhen used two rotating circular tables as trays for laying out his type. The first table was separated into 24 trays in which each movable type was categorized based on a number corresponding with a rhyming pattern. The second table contained miscellaneous characters. The set of wafer-like metal stamp types could be assembled to form pages, inked, and page impressions taken from rubbings on cloth or paper. In 1322,

1352-604: A single spiral text, which is split by the inscribed radial strokes into groups. These groups are conventionally called "words", even though their true linguistic or other nature is not known. Both ends of the text on each side are also assumed to be "word" boundaries. There are 61 such "words" on the Disc, with two to seven sign occurrences each: 31 on side A and 30 on side B. These "words" are conventionally numbered A1 to A31 and B1 to B30, reading from right to left (clockwise, edge-to-center). There may be one additional radial stroke near

1456-538: A surface by rolling the seal on wet clay. Seals and stamps may have been precursors to movable type. The uneven spacing of the impressions on brick stamps found in the Mesopotamian cities of Uruk and Larsa , dating from the 2nd millennium BC , has been conjectured by some archaeologists as evidence that the stamps were made using movable type. The enigmatic Minoan Phaistos Disc of c.  1800 –1600 BC has been considered by one scholar as an early example of

1560-472: A trough level with fine sandy [clay] of the reed-growing seashore. Wood-cut letters are pressed into the sand, then the impressions become negative and form letters [moulds]. At this step, placing one trough together with another, one pours the molten bronze down into an opening. The fluid flows in, filling these negative moulds, one by one becoming type. Lastly, one scrapes and files off the irregularities, and piles them up to be arranged. A potential solution to

1664-452: Is Armenian bole , which is used to soothe an upset stomach. Some animals such as parrots and pigs ingest clay for similar reasons. Kaolin clay and attapulgite have been used as anti-diarrheal medicines. Clay as the defining ingredient of loam is one of the oldest building materials on Earth , among other ancient, naturally occurring geologic materials such as stone and organic materials like wood. Between one-half and two-thirds of

1768-400: Is a continuous spiral line that separates successive turns of the text. The strip between successive spires of this line is divided into sections by short radial lines, so that each section contains a few whole signs. The presumed start of the text, adjacent to the edge, is also marked by such a radial stroke, with the addition of five dots punched along it with the stylus. Finally, under some of

1872-530: Is a printed "check" of the Jin dynasty with two square holes for embedding two bronze movable-type characters, each selected from 1,000 different characters, such that each printed paper note has a different combination of markers. A copper-block printed note dated between 1215 and 1216 in the collection of Luo Zhenyu 's Pictorial Paper Money of the Four Dynasties , 1914, shows two special characters—one called Ziliao ,

1976-620: Is a unique type of marine clay indigenous to the glaciated terrains of Norway , North America , Northern Ireland , and Sweden . It is a highly sensitive clay, prone to liquefaction , and has been involved in several deadly landslides . Modelling clay is used in art and handicraft for sculpting . Clays are used for making pottery , both utilitarian and decorative, and construction products, such as bricks, walls, and floor tiles. Different types of clay, when used with different minerals and firing conditions, are used to produce earthenware, stoneware, and porcelain. Prehistoric humans discovered

2080-634: Is an oblique stroke at the end of word A24, even though high-resolution images show it to be just a crack. The following is a rendering of the Phaistos Disc inscription in Unicode characters from the Phaistos code block (code points +101D0 to +101FC). The radial strokes are denoted by the ASCII character "|" (+7C), and the oblique subscripted stroke by the comma-like PHAISTOS DISK COMBINING OBLIQUE STROKE (+101FD) after

2184-459: Is clay with visible annual layers that are formed by seasonal deposition of those layers and are marked by differences in erosion and organic content. This type of deposit is common in former glacial lakes . When fine sediments are delivered into the calm waters of these glacial lake basins away from the shoreline, they settle to the lake bed. The resulting seasonal layering is preserved in an even distribution of clay sediment banding. Quick clay

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2288-622: Is highly non-random, and quite different between the two sides. Evans's symbol 02 (PLUMED HEAD) is the most frequent one, occurring 19 times — 14 of them on side A. The next most frequent signs are 07 (HELMET), with 18 occurrences, mostly on side B; 12 (SHIELD), with 17, mostly on side A; and 27 (HIDE), with 15, of which 10 on side A. Still, 26 of the 45 symbols occur on both sides, at least once on each. The most common signs that occur on only one side are 31 (EAGLE), on side A, and 22 (SLING), on side B; both with five occurrences each. The following table shows how many distinct signs ( Sign count ) have

2392-407: Is highly non-uniform. For example, of the 17 occurrences of sign 12 (SHIELD), thirteen follow immediately sign 02 (PLUMED HEAD). The following is a single image of the text "unrolled". While the order of the characters is left-to-right reversed, the signs themselves are in the original orientation. Evans, at one point, published an assertion that the disc had been written, and should be read, from

2496-674: Is important to soil fertility. Clay is a common component of sedimentary rock . Shale is formed largely from clay and is the most common of sedimentary rocks. However, most clay deposits are impure. Many naturally occurring deposits include both silts and clay. Clays are distinguished from other fine-grained soils by differences in size and mineralogy. Silts , which are fine-grained soils that do not include clay minerals, tend to have larger particle sizes than clays. There is, however, some overlap in particle size and other physical properties. The distinction between silt and clay varies by discipline. Geologists and soil scientists usually consider

2600-416: Is now firmly established, and that Chinese-Korean technique, or a report of it traveled westward is almost certain." However, Joseph P. McDermott claimed that "No text indicates the presence or knowledge of any kind of Asian movable type or movable type imprint in Europe before 1450. The material evidence is even more conclusive." Johannes Gutenberg of Mainz , Germany, invented the printing press , using

2704-429: Is the longest-known ceramic material. Prehistoric humans discovered the useful properties of clay and used it for making pottery . Some of the earliest pottery shards have been dated to around 14,000 BCE, and clay tablets were the first known writing medium. Clay is used in many modern industrial processes, such as paper making, cement production, and chemical filtering . Between one-half and two-thirds of

2808-512: Is used in many industrial processes, such as paper making, cement production, and chemical filtering . Bentonite clay is widely used as a mold binder in the manufacture of sand castings . Clay is a common filler used in polymer nanocomposites . It can reduce the cost of the composite, as well as impart modified behavior: increased stiffness , decreased permeability , decreased electrical conductivity , etc. Traditional uses of clay as medicine go back to prehistoric times. An example

2912-469: The Prüfening dedicatory inscription . Popular-science author Jared Diamond describes the disc as an example of a technological innovation that did not become widespread because it was made at the wrong time in history. Diamond contrasts the process with Gutenberg 's printing press . Besides the stamped symbols, there are a few markings made by scoring the moist clay with a sharp stylus. On each side there

3016-646: The Unicode universal computer character (UCS) set in 2008, after a 2006 proposal by Michael Everson and John H. Jenkins. In the following table, the No. column is the Evans number of each sign; the Glyph column is a modern drawing of the symbol; and the Font column uses the UCS font available in the browser. The assigned Unicode names are PHAISTOS DISC SIGN followed by the names shown under Name in

3120-563: The Western Xia (1038–1227) period are known, of which the Auspicious Tantra of All-Reaching Union , which was discovered in the ruins of Baisigou Square Pagoda in 1991 is believed to have been printed sometime during the reign of Emperor Renzong of Western Xia (1139–1193). It is considered by many Chinese experts to be the earliest extant example of a book printed using wooden movable type. At least 13 material finds in China indicate

3224-451: The Dutch governmental Algemeene Landsdrukkerij , later: "State-printery" ( Staatsdrukkerij ) decided during a reorganisation to use a standard type-height of 63 points Didot. Staatsdrukkerij-hoogte , actually Belgium-height, but this fact was not widely known . Modern, factory-produced movable type was available in the late 19th century. It was held in the printing shop in a job case ,

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3328-660: The Mongol language, some with Chinese words printed between the pages—strong evidence that the books were printed in China. During the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), Hua Sui in 1490 used bronze type in printing books. In 1574 the massive 1000-volume encyclopedia Imperial Readings of the Taiping Era ( 《太平御覧》 ) was printed with bronze movable type. In 1725 the Qing dynasty government made 250,000 bronze movable-type characters and printed 64 sets of

3432-557: The Netherlands: Johan Enschedé & Zonen , at Haarlem , and Lettergieterij Amsterdam, voorheen Tetterode . They both had their own type-height: Enschedé: 65 23/24 points Didot, and Amsterdam: 66 1/24 points Didot—enough difference to prevent a combined use of fonts from the two typefoundries: Enschede would be too light, or otherwise the Amsterdam-font would print rather bold. This was a way of keeping clients. In 1905

3536-442: The Phaistos disk is that the embossed signs that comprise its inscription all result from pressing separate stamps – one for each symbol – into the soft clay before firing. Thus the disk can be seen as an early example of movable-type printing. Typesetter and linguist Herbert Brekle writes: If the disc is, as assumed, a textual representation, we are really dealing with a "printed" text, which fulfills all definitional criteria of

3640-615: The Song dynasty through the Qing dynasty. Bi Sheng (990–1051) of the Song dynasty also pioneered the use of wooden movable type around 1040 AD, as described by the Chinese scholar Shen Kuo (1031–1095). However, this technology was abandoned in favour of clay movable types due to the presence of wood grains and the unevenness of the wooden type after being soaked in ink. In 1298, Wang Zhen ( 王禎 ),

3744-505: The West consists of three stages: The type-height varied in different countries. The Monotype Corporation Limited in London UK produced moulds in various heights: A Dutch printer's manual mentions a tiny difference between French and German Height: Tiny differences in type-height can cause quite bold images of characters. At the end of the 19th century there were only two typefoundries left in

3848-524: The affected symbol. The radial stroke with five dots, that indicates the presumed start of text, is denoted by the ISO Latin 1 character "¦" (+A6). The boxed question mark "⍰" (+2370) denotes the illegible sign in word A8. The appearance of the signs will depend on the font used by the browser, but normally they should all be left-to-right flipped relative to their appearance on the disk. Side A : Side B The following transcription uses modern drawings of

3952-439: The blocks had a limited lifespan. Gutenberg and his associates developed oil-based inks ideally suited to printing with a press on paper, and the first Latin typefaces . His method of casting type may have differed from the hand-mould used in subsequent decades. Detailed analysis of the type used in his 42-line Bible has revealed irregularities in some of the characters that cannot be attributed to ink spread or type wear under

4056-499: The casting, causing variants and anomalies, and that the punch-matrix system came into use possibly around the 1470s. This raises the possibility that the development of movable type in the West may have been progressive rather than a single innovation. Gutenberg's movable-type printing system spread rapidly across Europe, from the single Mainz printing press in 1457 to 110 presses by 1480, with 50 of them in Italy . Venice quickly became

4160-408: The center of side A, over-stamped by the sign 03 (TATTOOED HEAD), between sign 10 (ARROW) and the central sign 38 (ROSETTE). However, most scholars ignore that possible stroke and count the last three symbols as a single "word" 10-03-38 (which happens to occur also at about the same position on the next-to-last turn). On both sides, there is a radial line also right before the start (outermost end) of

4264-485: The center out, because it would have been easiest to place the inscription first and then size the disc to fit the text. There is general agreement that he was wrong, and Evans himself later changed his mind: the inscription was made, and should be read, in the clockwise sense, from the outside in toward the centre, as with the similar spiral inscription on the Lead Plaque of Magliano . The signs are laid out on each side as

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4368-416: The centre of typographic and printing activity. Significant contributions came from Nicolas Jenson , Francesco Griffo , Aldus Manutius , and other printers of late 15th-century Europe. Gutenberg's movable type printing system offered a number of advantages over previous movable type techniques. The lead-antimony-tin alloy used by Gutenberg had half the melting temperature of bronze, making it easier to cast

4472-464: The characters were cut in relief, completely differently from those cut intaglio. When printing, the bulging characters would have some ink spread on them and be covered by paper. With workers' hands moving on the back of paper gently, characters would be printed on the paper. By the Song dynasty , woodblock printing came to its heyday. Although woodblock printing played an influential role in spreading culture, there were some significant drawbacks. Carving

4576-415: The cohesion that makes it plastic. In kaolinite clay, the bonding between plates is provided by a film of water molecules that hydrogen bond the plates together. The bonds are weak enough to allow the plates to slip past each other when the clay is being moulded, but strong enough to hold the plates in place and allow the moulded clay to retain its shape after it is moulded. When the clay is dried, most of

4680-600: The disc and about 50 cm (20 in) above the floor, Linear A tablet 'PH-1' was also found. Yves Duhoux (1977) dates the disc to between 1850 B.C. and 1600 B.C. (MMIII in Minoan chronology ) on the basis of Luigi Pernier's report, which says that the disc was in a Middle Minoan undisturbed context. Jeppesen (1963) dates it to after 1400 (LMII–LMIII in Minoan chronology). Doubting the viability of Pernier's report, Louis Godart (1990) resigns himself to admitting that archaeologically,

4784-448: The disc may be dated to anywhere in Middle or Late Minoan times (MMI–LMIII, a period spanning most of the second millennium B.C. ). Jan Best suggests a date in the first half of the 14th century B.C. (LMIIIA) based on his dating of tablet PH-1. The disk is made of fine-grained clay. Some authors have stated that the clay does not appear to be of local origin, perhaps not even from Crete. It

4888-436: The disk in two or more orientations, rotated by 90 or 180 degrees. It is generally assumed that the rotation has no semantic or linguistic value, so the rotated copies are still the same symbol. Therefore, the "normal" orientation of those signs is not known, and might have been left to the scribe's discretion. Many of the signs are depictions of concrete objects with a recognizable general nature (such as humans, birds, plants,

4992-473: The encyclopedic Complete Classics Collection of Ancient China ( 《古今圖書集成》 ). Each set consisted of 5,040 volumes, making a total of 322,560 volumes printed using movable type. In 1234 the first books known to have been printed in metallic type set were published in Goryeo dynasty Korea. They form a set of ritual books, Sangjeong Gogeum Yemun , compiled by Ch'oe Yun-ŭi . While these books have not survived,

5096-413: The first Minoan palace. The disc was found in the main cell of an underground "temple depository". These basement cells, only accessible from above, were neatly covered with a layer of fine plaster . Their content was poor in precious artifacts, but rich in black earth and ashes, mixed with burnt bovine bones. In the northern part of the main cell, in the same black layer, a few centimetres south-east of

5200-516: The first known writing medium. Clay was chosen due to the local material being easy to work with and widely available. Scribes wrote on the tablets by inscribing them with a script known as cuneiform , using a blunt reed called a stylus , which effectively produced the wedge shaped markings of their writing. After being written on, clay tablets could be reworked into fresh tablets and reused if needed, or fired to make them permanent records. Purpose-made clay balls were used as sling ammunition . Clay

5304-429: The focus was on reprinting Chinese classics lost in 1126 when Korea's libraries and palaces had perished in a conflict between dynasties. Scholarly debate and speculation has occurred as to whether Eastern movable type spread to Europe between the late 14th century and early 15th centuries. For example, authoritative historians Frances Gies and Joseph Gies claimed that "The Asian priority of invention movable type

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5408-566: The globe . The 19th-century invention of hot metal typesetting and its successors caused movable type to decline in the 20th century. The technique of imprinting multiple copies of symbols or glyphs with a master type punch made of hard metal first developed around 3000 BC in ancient Sumer . These metal punch types can be seen as precursors of the letter punches adapted in later millennia to printing with movable metal type. Cylinder seals were used in Mesopotamia to create an impression on

5512-406: The idea of losing hanja , the badge of their elitism", stifled the adoption of the new alphabet. A " Confucian prohibition on the commercialization of printing" also obstructed the proliferation of movable type, restricting the distribution of books produced using the new method to the government. The technique was restricted to use by the royal foundry for official state publications only, where

5616-637: The invention of paper during the Chinese Han dynasty , writing materials became more portable and economical. Yet, copying books by hand was still labour-consuming. Not until the Xiping Era (172–178 AD), towards the end of the Eastern Han dynasty, did sealing print and monotype appear. These were used to print designs on fabrics and to print texts. By about the 8th century during the Tang dynasty , woodblock printing

5720-566: The invention of bronze movable type printing in China no later than the 12th century, with the country producing large-scale bronze-plate-printed paper money and formal official documents issued by the Jin (1115–1234) and Southern Song (1127–1279) dynasties with embedded bronze metal types for anti-counterfeit markers. Such paper-money printing might date back to the 11th-century jiaozi of Northern Song (960–1127). The typical example of this kind of bronze movable type embedded copper-block printing

5824-483: The iron plate. In this he placed the types, set close together. When the frame was full, the whole made one solid block of type. He then placed it near the fire to warm it. When the paste [at the back] was slightly melted, he took a smooth board and pressed it over the surface, so that the block of type became as even as a whetstone. For each character there were several types, and for certain common characters there were twenty or more types each, in order to be prepared for

5928-618: The library archives of the Vatican and Oxford University among many others. Around 1450, German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg invented the metal movable-type printing press, along with innovations in casting the type based on a matrix and hand mould . The small number of alphabetic characters needed for European languages was an important factor. Gutenberg was the first to create his type pieces from an alloy of lead , tin , and antimony —and these materials remained standard for 550 years. For alphabetic scripts , movable-type page setting

6032-607: The linguistic and cultural bottleneck that held back movable type in Korea for 200 years appeared in the early 15th century—a generation before Gutenberg would begin working on his own movable-type invention in Europe—when Sejong the Great devised a simplified alphabet of 24 characters ( hangul ) for use by the common people, which could have made the typecasting and compositing process more feasible. But Korea's cultural elite, "appalled at

6136-507: The loss of the two copper movable types. Song dynasty bronze block embedded with bronze metal movable type printed paper money was issued on a large scale and remained in circulation for a long time. The 1298 book Zao Huozi Yinshufa ( 《造活字印書法》 ) by the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) official Wang Zhen mentions tin movable type, used probably since the Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279), but this

6240-404: The material. The clay mineral kaolinite is transformed into a non-clay material, metakaolin , which remains rigid and hard if moistened again. Further firing through the stoneware and porcelain stages further recrystallizes the metakaolin into yet stronger minerals such as mullite . The tiny size and plate form of clay particles gives clay minerals a high surface area. In some clay minerals,

6344-464: The materials used for the type, punch, matrix, mould and in method of making an impression. The techniques for bronze casting, used at the time for making coins (as well as bells and statues) were adapted to making metal type. The Joseon dynasty scholar Seong Hyeon (성현, 成俔, 1439–1504) records the following description of the Korean font-casting process: At first, one cuts letters in beech wood. One fills

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6448-404: The method described by Shen Kuo in his Dream Pool Essays , and printed his book Notes of The Jade Hall ( 《玉堂雜記》 ). The ceramic movable type was also mentioned by Kublai Khan 's counsellor Yao Shu , who convinced his pupil Yang Gu to print language primers using this method. The claim that Bi Sheng's clay types were "fragile" and "not practical for large-scale printing" and "short lived"

6552-681: The money was made in 1161 during the Song dynasty. In 1193, a book in the Song dynasty documented how to use the copper movable type. The oldest extant book printed with movable metal type , Jikji , was printed in Korea in 1377 during the Goryeo dynasty. The spread of both movable-type systems was, to some degree, limited to primarily East Asia. The creation of the printing press in Europe may have been influenced by various sporadic reports of movable type technology brought back to Europe by returning business people and missionaries to China. Some of these medieval European accounts are still preserved in

6656-724: The moulded clay is just dry enough to hold its shape. The plastic limit of kaolinite clay ranges from about 36% to 40% and its liquid limit ranges from about 58% to 72%. High-quality clay is also tough, as measured by the amount of mechanical work required to roll a sample of clay flat. Its toughness reflects a high degree of internal cohesion. Clay has a high content of clay minerals that give it its plasticity. Clay minerals are hydrous aluminium phyllosilicate minerals , composed of aluminium and silicon ions bonded into tiny, thin plates by interconnecting oxygen and hydroxide ions. These plates are tough but flexible, and in moist clay, they adhere to each other. The resulting aggregates give clay

6760-555: The oldest book existing in the world printed in metallic movable types is Jikji , printed in Korea in 1377. The Asian Reading Room of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., displays examples of this metal type. Commenting on the invention of metallic types by Koreans, French scholar Henri-Jean Martin described this as "[extremely similar] to Gutenberg's". However, Korean movable metal type printing differed from European printing in

6864-582: The other called Zihao —for the purpose of preventing counterfeiting; over the Ziliao there is a small character (輶) printed with movable copper type, while over the Zihao there is an empty square hole—apparently the associated copper metal type was lost. Another sample of Song dynasty money of the same period in the collection of the Shanghai Museum has two empty square holes above Ziliao as well as Zihou , due to

6968-467: The plates carry a negative electrical charge that is balanced by a surrounding layer of positive ions ( cations ), such as sodium, potassium, or calcium. If the clay is mixed with a solution containing other cations, these can swap places with the cations in the layer around the clay particles, which gives clays a high capacity for ion exchange . The chemistry of clay minerals, including their capacity to retain nutrient cations such as potassium and ammonium,

7072-583: The preceding sign. The caret "^" indicates the transition from the first turn of the text (along the disk's edge) to the inner turns, and "??" is the unreadable sign. Side A : Side B The disc shows signs of corrections having been made, with some signs erased and over-printed by other signs. Godart describes these corrections as occurring in the following words: A1 (signs 02-12-13-01), A4 (29-29-34) together with A5 (02-12-04), A8 (12), A10 (02-41-19?-35), A12 (12), A16 (12-31-26?), A17 (second 27?), A29 (second 27?), B1 (12-22), B3 (37?), B4 (22-25 imprinted over

7176-400: The pressure of the press. Scholars conjecture that the type pieces may have been cast from a series of matrices made with a series of individual stroke punches, producing many different versions of the same glyph. It has also been suggested that the method used by Gutenberg involved using a single punch to make a mould, but the mould was such that the process of taking the type out disturbed

7280-523: The printing plate required considerable time, labour, and materials. It also was not convenient to store these plates and was difficult to correct mistakes. Bi Sheng ( 畢昇 ) (990–1051) developed the first known movable-type system for printing in China around 1040 AD during the Northern Song dynasty, using ceramic materials. As described by the Chinese scholar Shen Kuo (沈括) (1031–1095): When he wished to print, he took an iron frame and set it on

7384-541: The probability of these alignments being coincidental is rather small. Clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolinite , Al 2 Si 2 O 5 ( OH ) 4 ). Most pure clay minerals are white or light-coloured, but natural clays show a variety of colours from impurities, such as a reddish or brownish colour from small amounts of iron oxide . Clays develop plasticity when wet but can be hardened through firing . Clay

7488-478: The probability that they end up in only two (or three) signs is very small. There are several locations on side A where two occurrences of the same sign lie near each other in adjacent turns of the spiral, such as sign 02 (PLUMED HEAD) in word A1 and in word A14. Also the two 27 signs (HIDE) signs in word A29 are upside down, with the "heads" pointing to the HIDE sign of word A23, in the adjacent turn. Arie Cate claims that

7592-411: The removal of heavy metals from waste water and air purification. Movable type The world's first movable type printing technology for paper books was made of porcelain materials and was invented around 1040 AD in China during the Northern Song dynasty by the inventor Bi Sheng (990–1051). The earliest printed paper money with movable metal type to print the identifying code of

7696-413: The repetition of characters on the same page. When the characters were not in use he had them arranged with paper labels, one label for each rhyme-group, and kept them in wooden cases. If one were to print only two or three copies, this method would be neither simple nor easy. But for printing hundreds or thousands of copies, it was marvelously quick. As a rule he kept two forms going. While the impression

7800-529: The same number of occurrences ( Frequency ). The third number in each column is the product of the two numbers above, that is, the total number of occurrences ( Token count ) of those signs: The nine hapaxes (symbols occurring just once) are 04 (A5), 05 (B3), 11 (A13), 15 (B8), 17 (A24), 30 (B27), 42 (B9), 43 (B4), 44 (A7). Of the eight twice-occurring symbols, four (03, 21, 28, 41) occur on side A only, three (09, 16, 20) on side B only, and only one (14) occurs on both sides. The distribution of symbol pairs too

7904-551: The same), B10 (07?-24?-40?), B13 (beside 29?). Question marks indicate uncertainty about that particular sign being the result of a correction. The borders of word B28 were also widened to make room for sign 02. The two signs 27 (HIDE) in word A29 are rotated 180 degrees compared with all other occurrences of this sign: "head down" versus "head up". This rotation might be motivated by lack of space in A29. Arie Cate observed that if signs rotations were random with uniform distribution, then

8008-696: The separation to occur at a particle size of 2 μm (clays being finer than silts), sedimentologists often use 4–5 μm, and colloid chemists use 1 μm. Clay-size particles and clay minerals are not the same, despite a degree of overlap in their respective definitions. Geotechnical engineers distinguish between silts and clays based on the plasticity properties of the soil, as measured by the soils' Atterberg limits . ISO 14688 grades clay particles as being smaller than 2 μm and silt particles as being larger. Mixtures of sand , silt and less than 40% clay are called loam . Some clay minerals (such as smectite ) are described as swelling clay minerals, because they have

8112-409: The signs, which are left-to-right reversed with respect to their appearance on the disk. The labels A1-A31 and B1-B30 are the traditional word numbers. Side A : Side B : The following transcription uses the Evans numbers for the signs. The vertical bar characters "¦" and "|" represent the start-of-text and word-separating radial lines, respectively. The slash "/" denotes the oblique stroke under

8216-841: The site of formation. Secondary clays are clays that have been transported from their original location by water erosion and deposited in a new sedimentary deposit. Secondary clay deposits are typically associated with very low energy depositional environments such as large lakes and marine basins. The main groups of clays include kaolinite , montmorillonite - smectite , and illite . Chlorite , vermiculite , talc , and pyrophyllite are sometimes also classified as clay minerals. There are approximately 30 different types of "pure" clays in these categories, but most "natural" clay deposits are mixtures of these different types, along with other weathered minerals. Clay minerals in clays are most easily identified using X-ray diffraction rather than chemical or physical tests. Varve (or varved clay )

8320-438: The stamped signs, there are short oblique strokes. There are 45 distinct signs on the disk, occurring a total of 242 times — 123 on side A and 119 on side B. In addition to these, a small diagonal line was incised with a stylus (not stamped) underneath some signs, a total of 18 times. The 45 symbols were numbered by Sir Arthur Evans from 01 to 45, and this numbering has been adopted by most researchers. The signs were added to

8424-481: The table below, taken from a 1995 book by Louis Godart . One sign occurrence on side A is too damaged to identify. According to Godart, it may be sign 03 (TATTOOED HEAD) or 20 (DOLIUM); or less probably 08 (GAUNTLET) or 44 (SMALL AXE). Theoretically, it could also be a 46th distinct sign. The sign images below are reversed left-to-right relative to their appearance on the disk, reflecting their presentation in most Western books and articles. Also, some signs occur in

8528-517: The text all assume a right-to-left (clockwise, edge-to-center) reading direction on the disk, starting at the vertical (radial) line of five dots. In these transcription, however, the order of the characters has been flipped, so that they should be read left-to-right and top-to-bottom. The oblique stroke is assumed to indicate the last word of a "paragraph". A horizontal line has been added after each "paragraph" for clarity. For consistency with most published sources, these transcriptions assume that there

8632-419: The text, with five dots punched along it using a sharp round stylus. The short oblique strokes that were drawn with a stylus (not stamped) below some signs are always attached to the last sign of a "word" (assuming outside-in reading direction). Their meaning is a matter of discussion. One hypothesis, supported by Evans, is that they further subdivide the text into "paragraphs". The following transcriptions of

8736-460: The type and aided the use of reusable metal matrix moulds instead of the expendable sand and clay moulds. The use of antimony alloy increased hardness of the type compared to lead and tin for improved durability of the type. The reusable metal matrix allowed a single experienced worker to produce 4,000 to 5,000 individual types a day, while Wang Chen had artisans working 2 years to make 60,000 wooden types. Type-founding as practised in Europe and

8840-399: The typographic principle. The spiral sequencing of the graphematical units, the fact that they are impressed in a clay disc (blind printing!) and not imprinted are merely possible technological variants of textual representation. The decisive factor is that the material "types" are proven to be repeatedly instantiated on the clay disc. A medieval example of a similar blind printing technique is

8944-489: The useful properties of clay. Some of the earliest pottery shards recovered are from central Honshu , Japan . They are associated with the Jōmon culture, and recovered deposits have been dated to around 14,000 BCE. Cooking pots, art objects, dishware, smoking pipes , and even musical instruments such as the ocarina can all be shaped from clay before being fired. Ancient peoples in Mesopotamia adopted clay tablets as

9048-407: The vast quantities needed to print complete books, making the movable-type printing process a viable enterprise. Before Gutenberg, scribes copied books by hand on scrolls and paper, or print-makers printed texts from hand-carved wooden blocks. Either process took a long time; even a small book could take months to complete. Because carved letters or blocks were flimsy and the wood susceptible to ink,

9152-426: The water molecules are removed, and the plates hydrogen bond directly to each other, so that the dried clay is rigid but still fragile. If the clay is moistened again, it will once more become plastic. When the clay is fired to the earthenware stage, a dehydration reaction removes additional water from the clay, causing clay plates to irreversibly adhere to each other via stronger covalent bonding , which strengthens

9256-456: The water-based Chinese calligraphic ink well, and had an added disadvantage of uneven matching of the type which could sometimes result from the uneven changes in size of the type during the baking process. There has been an ongoing debate regarding the success of ceramic printing technology as there have been no printed materials found with ceramic movable types. However, it is historically recorded to have been used as late as 1844 in China from

9360-456: The wooden type was more durable under the mechanical rigors of handling, repeated printing wore down the character faces, and the types could only be replaced by carving new pieces. This system was later enhanced by pressing wooden blocks into sand and casting metal types from the depression in copper, bronze, iron or tin. This new method overcame many of the shortcomings of woodblock printing. Rather than manually carving an individual block to print

9464-735: The world's population live or work in buildings made with clay, often baked into brick, as an essential part of its load-bearing structure. Clay is a very common substance. Shale , formed largely from clay, is the most common sedimentary rock. Although many naturally occurring deposits include both silts and clay, clays are distinguished from other fine-grained soils by differences in size and mineralogy. Silts , which are fine-grained soils that do not include clay minerals, tend to have larger particle sizes than clays. Mixtures of sand , silt and less than 40% clay are called loam . Soils high in swelling clays ( expansive clay ), which are clay minerals that readily expand in volume when they absorb water, are

9568-493: The world's population, in both traditional societies as well as developed countries, still live or work in buildings made with clay, often baked into brick, as an essential part of their load-bearing structure. Also a primary ingredient in many natural building techniques, clay is used to create adobe , cob , cordwood , and structures and building elements such as wattle and daub , clay plaster, clay render case, clay floors and clay paints and ceramic building material . Clay

9672-481: Was being made from the one form, the type was being put in place on the other. When the printing of the one form was finished, the other was then ready. In this way the two forms alternated and the printing was done with great rapidity. After his death, the ceramic movable-type passed onto his descendants. In 1193, Zhou Bida , an officer of the Southern Song dynasty, made a set of clay movable-type method according to

9776-417: Was cast in doubt by the discovery of a vase with a nearly identical symbol incised on the bottom, believed to be a potter's mark. Symbol 20 ("DOLIUM") was assumed to be the conch of a large sea snail, such as Tonna dolium or some Eudolium or Charonia species. One such conch was found at Phaistos and is believed to have been used as a musical instrument for ritual uses. The distribution of symbols

9880-497: Was discovered in 1908 by the Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier during the excavation of the Minoan palace of Phaistos . The disk is about 15 cm (5.9 in) in diameter and is covered on each side with a spiral text, consisting of a total of 241 occurrences of 45 distinct signs, which were created by pressing individual sign stamps onto the soft clay before firing. While its unique features initially led some scholars to suspect

9984-437: Was discovered in the Minoan palace-site of Phaistos , near Hagia Triada , on the south coast of Crete ; specifically the disc was found in the basement of room 8 in building 101 of a group of buildings to the northeast of the main palace. This grouping of four rooms also served as a formal entry into the palace complex. Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier recovered the intact "dish" on 3 July 1908 during his excavation of

10088-449: Was intentionally and properly fired, unlike tablets and seals that were baked only accidentally. The disk is approximately cylindrical, about 16 cm in diameter and almost 2 cm thick, with rounded edges. More precisely, the outline is slightly egg-shaped, with the diameter varying from 15.8 to 16.5 cm and the thickness from 1.6 to 2.1 cm . The disk is slightly concave on side A and convex on side B. The most remarkable feature of

10192-400: Was invented and worked as follows. First, the neat hand-copied script was stuck on a relatively thick and smooth board, with the front of the paper sticking to the board, the paper being so thin it was transparent, the characters showing in reverse distinctly so that every stroke could be easily recognized. Then, carvers cut away the parts of the board that were not part of the character, so that

10296-457: Was largely experimental. It was unsatisfactory due to its incompatibility with the inking process. But by the late 15th century these concerns were resolved and bronze type was widely used in Chinese printing. During the Mongol Empire (1206–1405), printing using movable type spread from China to Central Asia. The Uyghurs of Central Asia used movable type, their script type adopted from

10400-454: Was located above the case that held the other letters; this is why capital letters are called "upper case" characters while the non-capitals are "lower case". Compartments also held spacers, which are blocks of blank type used to separate words and fill out a line of type, such as em and en quads ( quadrats , or spaces. A quadrat is a block of type whose face is lower than the printing letters so that it does not itself print.). An em space

10504-581: Was quicker than woodblock printing . The metal type pieces were more durable and the lettering was more uniform, leading to typography and fonts . The high quality and relatively low price of the Gutenberg Bible (1455) established the superiority of movable type in Europe and the use of printing presses spread rapidly. The printing press may be regarded as one of the key factors fostering the Renaissance and, due to its effectiveness, its use spread around

10608-477: Was refuted by later experiments. Bao Shicheng (1775–1885) wrote that baked clay moveable type was "as hard and tough as horn"; experiments show that clay type, after being baked in an oven, becomes hard and difficult to break, such that it remains intact after being dropped from a height of two metres onto a marble floor. The length of clay movable types in China was 1 to 2 centimetres, not 2 mm, thus hard as horn. But similar to metal type, ceramic type did not hold

10712-422: Was the width of a capital letter "M"—as wide as it was high—while an en space referred to a space half the width of its height (usually the dimensions for a capital "N"). Individual letters are assembled into words and lines of text with the aid of a composing stick , and the whole assembly is tightly bound together to make up a page image called a forme , where all letter faces are exactly the same height to form

10816-461: Was used as a mortar in brick chimneys and stone walls where protected from water. Clay, relatively impermeable to water, is also used where natural seals are needed, such as in pond linings, the cores of dams , or as a barrier in landfills against toxic seepage (lining the landfill, preferably in combination with geotextiles ). Studies in the early 21st century have investigated clay's absorption capacities in various applications, such as

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