The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1899-06-12
ORIGIN OF MOVABLE METAL TYPE
The Coreans Claim the Invention.

| The Coreans Claim the Invention.
Even Corea can boast of her share OF
the great inventions of the world
though, singularly enough, neither tbs
world at large nor she herself. except IN
one case, has benefited permanently by
the inventions. Corea was the first OF
all peoples to originate movable metal
type. For hundreds of years the coun-
try and the king had been under the
domination of the Buddhist priesthood
and the land was suffering the extremes
of sacerdotalism. Every third son must
by law become a monk-in other words,
an unproductive member of society; the
killing of cow was a greater crime
than the killing of man. The peoples
houses were being seized for the cree
ton of worse than useless monasteries.
At last the Gen vi Ta-jo, whom a do
tard king had sent upon the insane mis-
sion of invading China, turned to his
soldiers and said: "Shall we return to
the capital and apply ourselves to the
cleansing of the unspeakable corruption
Of our country?" He was applauded to
the echo, and, like Julius Caesar but
with better purpose. he recrossed the
Yalu, Corea's Rubicon, marched back
upon the capital, and sealed the death
warrant of sacerdotalism. No sooner
had the new dynasty been founded in
1892 than literature received a new i'm
petus through the revival of Confucian-
ism and the study of the ancient clas-
sizes. The monasteries, which had be-
come the repositories Of the scholarship
of the land. were filled with the unintel-
ligible jargon of Buddhism, and litera-
ture was almost wholly confined to its
ritual. But now schools were being es-
tablshed, books were being demanded,
and students were calling impatiently
for the time -honored classics. Thus it
was that in the reign of King TIA jong a
font of metal type was cast, the first the
world had ever seen. The are of xylo-
graphy had existed for centuries and
clay type had also been used in Japan
but Corea was the first to discern the
need of the more permanent and dura-
BILE form of metal type; and so well did
she carry out her plan that the type
then cast has come down to the present
day practically unimpaired Each type
was built on the principle of the arch,
being cylindrically concave on the I'M
der side. The purpose of this was to Sc
cure firmer hold upon the bed of bees
wax which constituted the form" tech
nically so called. A shallow tray was
filled with wax, and the type, after be-
ing firmly Embedded in it, We're "planed''
In the ordinary manner. The printer,
sitting cross-legged before it, applied Ii
quid ink by means of a soft brush. after
which a sheet of paper was lightly laid
upon the form. A piece of felt was
brushed softly across the porous paper
with the right hand, and the left re-
moved The printed page. In this was it
was possible to strike off some fifteen
hundred Impressions a day.
That the pieces of type from which the |
was made belonged to the |
original font is fairly plain, though not |
absolutely demonstrable. The annals of |
Corea show clearly that there have been |
Wo such fonts cast-one about the year |
I406, and the other some two centuries !
alter. But we find that these two fonts, |
or the remains of them, exist to-day. |
Those of the latter casting are now in |
common use in the Corean government |
printing office.-Harper's Magazine.