Movable metal type is often traced back to Gutenberg’s workshop, but its history is far older in Asia. Researchers are using atomic-scale tools to rewrite the narrative.
Other Asian innovations, like paper and gunpowder, have a clear record of dissemination to Europe, with artifacts and record-keeping that trace their travel westward along routes of trade and conquest. Printing doesn’t have that kind of paper trail, says Valerie Hansen, a professor of Chinese history at Yale University.
A close look at both printing technologies has also revealed more differences than similarities: different inks and different processes to create the metal types, which stamp ink into the page. In the 14th century, whenwas printed, Korean printers were widely using a method called sandcasting to produce types, which involves filling molds lined with compressed sand. To create their movable type, Europeans swapped sand for metal.
That innovation has long been traced back to Gutenberg's workshop. But in the early 2000s, in front of a packed house at a literary club in New York City, a pair of Princeton researchers: Perhaps Gutenberg’s creations represented less of a singular technological triumph than people had previously thought.
Their analysis focused on subtle imperfections in the text. If a metal mold had been used to create the types, each letter—say, all the letter’s on a page—should be the same. But a mathematical analysis revealed that there were differences in the letters. The researchers hypothesized that the patterns were more in line with sandcasting. Not everyone agrees with that interpretation, but since then, there has been more evidence in its favor.
The use of sandcasting doesn’t definitively link the two traditions—various forms of the technique were common in both Asia and Europe at the time—but it’s yet another example of how the two traditions are slightly closer than people think. It would so also mean that the metal mold, with its regular, replicable type, likely came later, and suggest that the printing press was a more gradual development than a sudden arrival on the scene.
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