11/2/2005: Traditional Korean printer

[srom]

it probably is chinese, but even after the invention of the korean alphabet scholarly people continued to use chinese because the korean alphabet was so easy to use, it was just TOO easy. strange but true!

i dunno what happens if the guy makes a typo... he probably just gets fired, heh.

koreans invented moveable type centuries before gutenberg did. they just weren't so big on announcing it to every country, i guess. it's probably a really special document he's making, since he's making the entire text just one big block instead of making the text out of lots of little ones.

some people are still into making moveable typefaces. nowadays... they make 'em out of steel... yikes!

[xoxoxoBruce]

Hi, srom. Welcome to the Cellar.
Read what CharlieG posted about Gutenberg inventing interchangeable type of uniform depth.

I think that picture was taken at the Frankfurt Book Fair, this year, where South Korea was the "Guest of Honor".

[n3v3r]

Yes, this is definitely Chinese, not sure which dialect though...
Does that mean he is using an old Korean printing method to print Chinese characters?

[russotto]

It's probably Korean. For everyday use, Korean is written using Hangul, a 15th century phonetic alphabet. But Korean can still be written using Chinese characters, and for decorative work like this, would be.

[Ibby]

Originally Posted by n3v3r

Yes, this is definitely Chinese, not sure which dialect though...

Thanks to Qin Shi Huang Di, the first Emperor of all China, ALL chinese dialects are written the same. Most are spoken completely differently, but written, are identical.

Heh, I love ressurecting old dead threads.

[aliasyzy]

I think who invented moveable type earlier is no big deal. It's natural to consider moveable type when people want to be more effcient.
The moveable type has been invented and developed in China since 10th century, but the whole block method was still widely used for a very long period. I don't know why, but this means the moveable type method that time had soft spots in some aspects. So, I think Gutenberg's invention is more important, for the idea of moveable type was put in practice perfectly since then.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by aliasyzy

I think who invented moveable type earlier is no big deal. It's natural to consider moveable type when people want to be more effcient.
The moveable type has been invented and developed in China since 10th century, but the whole block method was still widely used for a very long period. I don't know why, but this means the movable type method that time had soft spots in some aspects. So, I think Gutenberg's invention is more important, for the idea of movable type was put in practice perfectly since then.

As I understand it, individual letters and words were used to print for a while. What Gutenberg did was make type that was all the same height, to produce a printed uniform page, repeatedly.

[kyrasantae]

For the record, the text in the carving is the first two pages of the 1446 work "Hunmin Jeong-eum Haerye" (Explanations and Examples of the Proper Sounds for the Education of the People), one of the texts which explained how the new (at the time) Hangul alphabet worked. Since Chinese characters (hanja) were used before Hangul was invented, the text is primarily written that way.

(More info)
You can see the orignal pages here. It looks like the print on the block was printed from these images

[xoxoxoBruce]

Hey thanks, kyrasantae. Welcome to the Cellar.

Since it was a demonstration/show piece for a German Book Fair (I think*), it would follow that they would use a historical document to copy.

*It also makes sense that the link is in German.