"Light painting is not gray, light and thick, thick and light, poetry has a haze and haze, and the book is also a dragon and tiger!" Li Shimin put the brush aside and sighed loudly at the bamboo paper.

Following Li Zhan, I saw three words on the bamboo paper... Jade button paper.

"Jade button paper...!" Li Zhan smiled and read out the three words on the bamboo paper.

Looking at Li Zhan, Li Shimin smiled: "How is it... This is the name I gave you with the best bamboo paper, the jade button... Do you still like it? ”

"I love it...!" Li Zhan said with a smile: "In the future, the best bamboo paper in Zhushan is called jade button paper, this kind of jade button paper is good, with smooth and flexible, strong tensile force, friction is not hairy, uniform sheets, white color, smooth as jade, hygienic and non-toxic, clear and transparent, easy to dry, ink does not fade, and is not eroded for a long time.

It is an excellent paper for calligraphy and painting.

And Your Majesty, the best thing about jade button paper is to print books, I dare to guarantee that the books printed on jade button paper will not be bad for a hundred years...! ”

Li Shimin looked at Wang Dali with a smile and asked, "Dali... How much jade button paper can be made in a year? ”

"Back to Your Majesty... When I came, our papermaking master told me that if we could give us all the bamboo from all over the country, we could make 1 million catties of jade button paper a year. ”

"1 million catties of jade button paper!" In an instant, the corners of Li Shimin's mouth laughed: "That's just great!" ”

Li Zhan looked at Li Shimin, who was laughing happily, and said, "Your Majesty, more importantly, we can reduce the price of paper, so that the price of making books will also be reduced."

Child... Oh... Shichen also has a movable type printing technique, which can greatly save the cost of printing books. ”

"Zhan'er... Don't hide it, you are my eldest son, the eldest highness of the Tang Dynasty, and you can't defend yourself if you tell Dali...! Li Shimin smiled.

"Ahh Wang Dali looked at Li Zhan in shock, and then hurriedly knelt down to Li Zhan and said, "Wang Dali pays a visit to His Royal Highness." ”

Li Zhan hurriedly helped Wang Dali and said, "Uncle Dali... It's not that Li Zhan is hiding it from you, it's just that at that time, I, Li Zhan, haven't recognized my father yet, I'm sorry. ”

"Dali doesn't dare, Dali only rejoices, then there is blame, if Dali goes back and tells Brother Tang, I think Brother Tang will be happy." Wang Dali hurriedly said.

Li Zhan said: "I can only tell the owner of the soup village, and my identity will be hidden for a while!" ”

"Zhan'er...!" Li Shimin said: "The movable type printing you mentioned, can you get it out quickly, I'm afraid that your time in Chang'an is running out, Gaochang is about to move, and the king of Gaochang will not be able to fight it." ”

As soon as he heard this, he only heard Wang vigorously shouting: "Your Majesty, the Xuanjia Army is always ready!" ”

"Good...!" Wang Dali's words really made Li Shimin happy.

Li Zhan on the side also smiled and said: "Father, the Xuanjia Army is worthy of being the strongest army in my Tang Dynasty, but please rest assured that the Tang Tiger Army, the Tiger Army, the Lord will not disappoint the Emperor, this battle of Gaochang will be won." ”

"Zhan'er, the day of your Gaochang victory will be the time when I will announce your identity to the world." Li Shimin was very happy.

"Father Xie...!" Li Zhan bowed.

Then I heard Li Shimin say: "Zhan'er... Movable type printing should be fast. ”

Li Zhan said with a smile: "Please rest assured, within ten days, however, I will use the prison for my use." ”

"From this time on, I will serve you only as a prisoner, and my will will be made immediately." Li Shimin did not hesitate.

Li Zhan laughed and said, "Thank you, father...!" ”

................................

It was probably in the afternoon, when he was in prison, the prince Li Chengqian was by Li Zhan's side, Wang Dali was invited by Li Zhan to play in Qingfeng Building, and people sent bamboo paper all the way to play, so he should have a good time.

As for Li Zhan, he was about to start studying movable type printing.

First of all, it is now the Zhenguan period, you must know that the printing technology in the Zhenguan period of the Tang Dynasty is really not good, and now the Tang Dynasty has not even invented engraving printing, and it will not appear until the middle and late Tang Dynasty.

Some people will ask, then how did the Tang Dynasty have books now.

Bookmaid... I don't know if you've heard of it, but the so-called bookmaid, as the name suggests, was the person in charge of copying books at that time, according to modern terms, a scribe or typist.

Such a profession was born very early in ancient times, and its status has not been high, and its name has changed many times.

In the earliest days, it used to be called "book man", "book hand", "book worker", and finally "book maid", but no matter how the name changed, its identity and work content have not changed: copying books.

Transcribe those treasured classics one by one, bind them into volumes, and circulate them to the world for more and more people who need them. Today, we can learn about the history of our ancestors thousands of years ago, inherit the great Chinese civilization, and they are the unsung heroes behind it.

This work is very hard, every day is to lie on the case, copy the book stroke by stroke, and must not be scribbled, every stroke must be written squarely, the workload is large, the work intensity is high, it is indeed not a job that ordinary people can do, both to write well, but also to have patience.

Copy a single word and the whole book will be ruined.

What's more, in those years, it was indeed not ordinary people who did this kind of work, how many people with this kind of ability were willing to eat with this work? At least the children of the aristocracy and the Confucian students, most of them disdain to do it.

Those who are willing to eat with this mixed rice, most of them don't have this ability, they are uneducated, or they can't be coarse in writing and ink, and those who have good culture but can't write badly. Therefore, in ancient times, there were basically several types of people who did this work: one was a poor scholar, the other was a child of a broken noble, and even a prisoner who committed a crime.

Starting from the Han Dynasty, it has gone through the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, Sui Dynasty, Tang Dynasty, Song Dynasty... With the invention and maturity of movable type printing in the Northern Song Dynasty in the 11th century, there was no need for bookmaids to copy books.

Although it is said that in the middle and late Tang Dynasty, the formation of this engraving printing industry... But the moment is the whole page, the engraving printing plate, generally choose fine and solid wood, such as jujube, pear wood, etc.

Then the wood is sawn into pieces of planks, the words to be printed are written on thin paper, and then pasted on the boards, and then according to the strokes of each word, the strokes of each word are carved into yang characters one by one, so that the strokes of each word are protruding on the board. Once the board is carved, the book can be printed.

When printing the book, first use a brush dipped in ink, brush it on the carved board, and then, cover the board with white paper, and take a clean brush to gently brush the back of the paper, take down the paper, and the book will be printed. After the pages are printed, they are bound into a book, and the book is successfully printed.

It was too wasteful and troublesome, so during the Tang Dynasty, the printed matter was mainly concentrated in some metropolitan areas and developed commercial centers, but the printed matter in these places was mainly about Buddhist scriptures, almanacs, etc., and the printed works were extremely limited, which did not play a big role in promoting the culture of the whole society at that time.

Movable type printing... Bi Sheng's method is as follows: use cement to make blanks with consistent specifications, engrave anti-body words at one end, and the height of the protrusion of the character is like the thickness of the edge of the copper coin, and it is hardened with fire to become a single cement movable type.

In order to meet the needs of typesetting, there are several or even dozens of commonly used words in order to be used when repeated in the same edition. If you encounter an uncommon word, if you are not prepared in advance, you can use it as you go.

In order to facilitate the selection of words, the clay movable type is classified according to the rhyme and placed in the wooden lattice, and the paper strip is pasted to indicate it.

When typesetting, a framed iron plate is used as the bottom support, and a layer of agent made of pine resin, wax and paper ash is coated on top, and then the required cement movable type is picked out and arranged into the frame one by one.

Fill a frame to become a version, and then bake it with fire, wait for the agent to melt slightly, use a flat plate to flatten the literally, and after the medicine cools and solidifies, 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.

After printing, the potion is roasted with fire, and the movable type can fall off the iron plate with a slight shake of the hand, and then put it back into the original wooden grid according to the rhyme, so as to be used again next time.

Bi Sheng also experimented with movable type printing, but Bi Sheng did not use it because of the uneven texture of the wood, the difficulty of carving, the deformation of the movable type after being wet, and the difficulty of separating it from the agent.

However, Li Zhan is the one who stands on the shoulders of giants, this wooden type is actually the simplest and the most economical, and the wooden type was not invented by Bi Sheng, the man who created the wooden type is called Wang Zhen.

A native of Dongping, Shandong, he was an agronomist and served several county officials, and he left a book summarizing the experience of ancient agricultural production - "Agricultural Book".

Wang Zhen's methods of engraving, repairing, selecting, typesetting, and printing are all attached to this book.

He asked craftsmen to carve more than 30,000 movable wooden types in Jingde, Anhui Province, and tried to print more than 60,000 words of "Jingde County Chronicles" in the second year of Yuan Chengzong Dade, and printed 100 copies in less than a month, which shows the high efficiency. This is the first recorded movable type print.

Another contribution of Wang Zhen in printing technology was the invention of the rotary typesetting plate. A large wheel made of light wood, about seven feet in diameter and three feet high in the axle, is mounted on the axle and can rotate freely.

According to the classification method of ancient rhyme books, the wooden movable type is put into the grid in the plate. He made two pairs of such large roulette, and the typesetting worker sat between the two sets of roulette wheels and turned the roulette wheel to find the words, which is what Wang Zhen said, "to the word on the person, according to the rhyme to take the word".

This not only improves the efficiency of typesetting, but also reduces the manual labor of typesetters. It is a pioneering work in typesetting technology.

Subsequently, in the Ming and Qing dynasties, wooden movable type was generally popular, and the ancestral halls of various provinces often used wooden movable type to print genealogy and genealogy. Eleven years after Chongzhen, the imperial court "Di Bao" issued in the capital also changed to wooden typesetting.

Li Zhan directly copied a copy of Wang Zhen's "Movable Type Book Fang Zhi" from the encyclopedia and threw it to the master craftsman who would be the supervisor, and the master craftsman bowed down and said, "Ten days...!" ”

Li Zhan smiled happily.

..........................