Although it was already approaching the end of the year, it stands to reason that this should be the slowest time for the giant machine of Great Qin. But at this time, the official residence in Xianyang City was in full swing.

"Daqin Cultural Administration." This place looks like an official residence, but in fact it is more like a public-private joint venture, similar to the state-owned enterprises of later generations.

It is mainly responsible for the sale of paper, printing and sales of books. While preparing for the construction of the official residence, Li Chen was also preparing a newspaper office belonging to Daqin.

Controlling public opinion and guiding the wisdom of the people are extremely important for the future Great Qin.

Of course, if you want to spread the newspaper to millions of households, it is certainly not practical to rely on copying alone.

Nowadays, the main way of cultural transmission in Daqin is hand-copying, which is not only time-consuming and troublesome, but also easy to copy mistakes and omissions. This most primitive method makes books more and more precious. And the inheritance is always in the hands of the sons and hundreds of schools, if you can't enter the master's door, you will have no chance with knowledge.

First papermaking, then printing, this was originally Li Chen's plan. These two inventions with the same status also belong to one of the four great inventions of the Chinese nation.

From the time he mentioned the nine-year compulsory education to the First Emperor, Li Chen had already planned to make papermaking and printing.

Otherwise, it is only said that the massive number of textbooks for compulsory education are copied with bamboo slips, and the textbooks used by just one person may cost a large cart. And the literate Confucian students needed to transcribe books, I'm afraid there are not so many in the entire Great Qin.

Combining papermaking with printing, this kind of thing called books, will be the future of Daqin.

The history of the development of printing in ancient China should be from engraving printing to movable type printing.

Traditional engraving printing has always occupied a dominant position in the printing market. Block printing first appeared in the Sui Dynasty.

First, the planks are planed, then the planks are coated with a layer of paste, and then the written manuscript is pasted on the layout, and the lettering worker carves out the words one by one.

When it is time to print, the ink is applied to the prepared text plate, then covered with white paper, and gently brushed with a brush, and the text is printed on the paper.

Engraving printing is much more convenient than manual copying, and it played a very important role in the early cultural transmission of our country.

However, with the continuous development of society.

The deficiencies of engraving printing are becoming more and more obvious, not only clumsy and laborious, but also a waste of materials, each edition can only be used once, and it is inconvenient to store, and it is extremely difficult to change if there is a typo.

Under these conditions, it was not until the Song Dynasty that a man named Bi Zhen invented movable type printing.

Bi Zhen was a long-term printer in the Song Dynasty, and he felt more and more that the shortcomings of engraving printing urgently needed to be improved.

He conscientiously summed up the experience of his predecessors and his own work, pondered repeatedly, and tried to find more advanced methods, but he has never been able to make a breakthrough.

It wasn't until one day that he saw a group of children playing with mud in front of his house, and he suddenly became enlightened. The children made up animals, trees, houses, chairs, and other things out of mud, and then arranged them as they wished to make up different stories.

Bi Zhen looked at it, and had a flash of inspiration, and thought: If you use mud to pinch words one by one, and then arrange them into sentences, won't it greatly improve the efficiency of printing?

After thinking of this method, Bi Zhen immediately set about putting it into practice. After a lot of experimentation and repeated exploration, he finally decided to use mud, but the difference is that he added some gum to the mud.

In this way, it is easy to be momentized and not broken. He first cut the mud into small squares, carved words on them, burned them hard, cooled them, and then arranged the carved words according to the rhyme.

to make it easy to find. When printing, the movable type is found according to the article, arranged on an iron plate, and fixed with an iron frame on all sides.

In addition, he pre-lays an adhesive mixture of paper ash, pine resin and wax on the iron plate.

Then, the movable type is roasted on the fire, and when the adhesive melts, the words are firmly flattened with a flat plate, and when cooled, each movable type plate becomes a solid whole. Next, just brush the ink on the plate, apply the paper, and press it lightly. After printing, the iron plate is heated with fire, and after the adhesive is melted, the movable type can be taken out and stored for the next use. In order to improve efficiency, Bi Zhen uses two iron plates, one for printing and one for typesetting. Alternate use to greatly increase the printing speed.

Bi Zhen invented this kind of cement movable type printing technology summed up in five steps, that is, the production of movable type, typesetting, printing, disassembly and movable type rhyme, compared with engraving printing, this method is fast plate making, high printing quality, and can be reused, saving materials and shortening the printing cycle, can be called an epoch-making breakthrough in the history of printing.

Whether it is engraving printing or movable type printing, there is not the slightest technical obstacle for the current Daqin.

In contrast, Li Chen chose movable type printing. Movable type printing and engraving printing are only different in thinking, and there are no technical barriers.

In contrast, engraving printing is troublesome, time-consuming, inefficient, small in quantity, easy to copy mistakes and omissions, and the engraved plates need to be carefully stored, accounting for a large number of buildings, and the whole page needs to be re-engraved if typos are found.

Movable type printing has the printing method of changing dead characters into movable type, changing dead plates into letterpress plates, economical, time-saving, labor-saving, material-saving, and money-saving.

Xianyang City will be a young mansion

"Dare to ask Master Hou, whether this character mold is printed in Yang or Yin." The lead craftsman asked.

The so-called yang text sub-mold is convex, and the yin text is concave. However, the effect of these two types of characters on paper is opposite. The font is upside down when the yang character is stenciled on the paper, while the yin character is printed on the paper is correct.

"Yinwen." Li Chen said that the upside-down Yang script template printed out is more used on the seal.

"Your Majesty has an order, and the Shaofu can temporarily put aside the rest of the affairs in hand. My matter is the most important thing in the world. ”

"Bring all the craftsmen over, and in three days, I'll take the lettering, the more the merrier." Li Chen instructed the generals and officials of the Shaofu around him.

Three days in a hurry

Under the guidance of Li Chen, the craftsmen who made Shaofu burned the first batch of character molds. This boxy font is much simpler than firing utensils.

Bronze fonts were scattered in front of Li Chen's eyes, and there were almost all the fonts commonly used by Daqin at present.

When using it, the literate Confucian scholars picked up the movable characters they needed and put them into a wooden frame made of gum, wax, and plant ash.

The font mold is lined up in a frame to become a version, and then baked with fire, and when the agent is slightly melted, the literal surface is flattened with a flat plate, and after the agent is cooled and solidified, it becomes a version. When printing, as long as the ink is brushed on the plate, covered with paper, and a certain amount of pressure is added. In order to be able to print continuously, two iron plates are used, one version is brushed, the other is typeset, and the two plates are used alternately.

In order to prevent the loss of individual character molds, Li Chen made five sets of craftsmen.