It's a new idea, but it's not much new!

After all, in most time-traveling novels, once the protagonist begins to improve papermaking, then the appearance of printing is a matter of course. Often, as soon as the wooden type or clay type comes out, it is basically the relatives and friends who are shocked first, then the Confucians, and in the end, it is inevitable that His Majesty the Emperor will also be shocked. As for violating the interests of the family, it is also a common routine to be regarded as a thorn in the side and a thorn in the flesh......

Of course, it is impossible for Li Yuanjia to let go of this weapon of destruction to promote the development of civilization.

Li Yuanjia didn't care about those so-called threats at all.

Compared with those who have crossed the predecessors, his status as a noble man is the best umbrella, and the so-called family threat does not need to be considered.

And......

In fact, even if he "invented" movable type printing, and put it in front of the patriarchs of those big families, Li Yuanjia didn't think that they would be angry, and even laughed at the king for being full of food, and no one was really idle; As for the fear of provoking the emperor's jealousy or something, Li Yuanjia also thinks that even if he puts movable type printing in front of his brother Li Shimin, Tang Taizong is afraid that he will look at him at most, and nodded and said: "It looks interesting, it took a lot of effort, right?" ”

The movable type printing invented by the people of the Song Dynasty was really useless in the Tang Dynasty.

In fact, not only was there no use in the Tang Dynasty, but even after a thousand years, until the Ming and Qing dynasties, engraving printing was still the mainstream - movable type printing was not nothing, but very little! Compared with the movable type printing technology invented by Gutenberg in the West hundreds of years later, it is simply unbearable to mention.

The reason for this is not only because Western characters are composed of more than 20 letters, while there are thousands of Chinese characters, but also because of the printing needs of ancient China and the aesthetic taste of the literati.

In ancient China, there were too few literate and literate people.

The threshold for reading is so high that only a small number of literati are interested in buying expensive books. Moreover, in the case that there are not too many books in the first place, the extremely concise text style also leads to the fact that the number of words in those classic classics is not much, and the engraving printing does not cost too much, and sometimes a particularly short or even a few engravings are enough. There is only a "tome" like "The Book of Rites", and 100,000 words require thousands of engravings, which costs a lot. However, if it is properly preserved, the engraving can be used for a long time, unlike movable type printing, which is dismantled once and rearranged the next time it is reprinted.

Moreover, the layout of engraving printing looks much more beautiful than that of movable type printing.

An engraving plate is generally completed by one person, the style is consistent, neatly arranged, and the movable type is completed by a number of craftsmen, the font size, style is not uniform, not to mention, the text is arranged when it is also very easy to appear horizontal, inverted words, etc. So much so that when later experts judged the printing method of an ancient book, similar errors often became the reason for judging that it was movable type printing......

In this case, the literati naturally preferred the engraving version.

Of course, these are all trivial matters and are not the fundamental reasons that hinder the popularity of movable type printing. When the elder generation Sun Peng was curious about this problem, he once went to study it and read some of the calves' explanations, and then found out the real reason - it was too expensive!

That's right, the cost of movable type printing is too expensive!

The cost of wooden type and clay type is slightly lower, but it is very easy to be damaged, and the cost of continuous renewal and replacement is too high, and the significance of large-scale printing is not great. The cost of making metal movable type by hand is extremely high, and a Fujian person in the Qing Dynasty once spent 20 years to make more than 400,000 copper movable type at the cost of more than 200,000 taels of silver, and the investment can be imagined. And unlike the West, where you can choose movable characters as long as you know the letters, there are tens of thousands of ancient Chinese characters, even if there are two or three thousand commonly used characters, where can ordinary craftsmen know them all? Even if you let literate people typeset, just the orderly management and selection of those metal movable types require a complete set of word detection methods to cooperate.

In addition to the cost issue, the limitations of technology also make movable type printing look less rosy.

Movable type printing looks very simple, and those small fresh videos on the Internet in later generations also make this technology look so simple, it seems that as long as some words are engraved together, they are brushed with paper and ink......

But after all, it was carefully only printed one, and you tried to print hundreds of copies? Do you try printing a book?

"Alas, what a waste!"

Thinking that he knew that the usefulness of the invention was not too great, at least in a short period of time, he would definitely not want to use it on a large scale, Li Yuanjia was distressed.

It's all his money!

But just like he thought when he was entangled at the beginning, no matter how high the cost is and how long it takes, this movable type printing still needs to be done. Not only to do it, Li Yuanjia also plans to directly skip the wooden type and clay type, and directly use the metal type, and decided to improve the technology of movable type printing as much as possible in his lifetime!

At the end of the day, this kind of technology has played too much role in the promotion of the times.

In a sense, low-cost printing is even more important than papermaking, and it is of greater significance for the promotion and growth of knowledge. So on the premise of not affecting himself, no matter how much money he spends, no matter how long it takes, Li Yuanjia wants to get it out.

Not to mention that later generations in the West believed that Gutenberg was the originator of movable type printing, after all, compared with the movable type printing invented by Bi Sheng, there is indeed a great difference in technology. Just so that Koreans will not talk about their own metal movable type printing in the future, Li Yuanjia feels that this money is worth the time!

Besides, there were indeed a lot of difficulties before I did it, but if I really did it, who would dare to say that it would be no fun?

Do you really know nothing when you are a traverser?

The principle of movable type printing is very simple, basically you can understand it at a glance, even if it is put in the Tang Dynasty, it is not a big deal, but Li Yuanjia, who has studied it, knows more!

For example, he knows that the water-based ink used in China is actually not suitable for metal movable type, and it is best to use oil-based ink; For example, he knows that it is troublesome to make movable type, but it is much more convenient to use the method of yin and yang inverted molds; For example, he knew that the cost of copper movable type was too high, and there would even be a situation of melting words to cast money, but lead, tin, and antimony alloy movable type was more suitable; For another example, Li Yuanjia also knows that the key to movable type printing is not in movable type, but in plate making......

Even the kind of font that only appeared during the great development of printing in the Ming Dynasty, Li Yuanjia can also take it out in advance.

Anyway, he's also a calligrapher and painter!

Therefore, after Han Shan brought a blacksmith and an inksmith from the house, and then watched with a pained face, Li Yuanjia, the king of Yu, gave them two orders: the blacksmith went to find a metal that could be easily melted, and the inksmith wanted to invent a more viscous ink that could be attached to the metal......