page_title: Movable type
section_title: Type-founding
hierarchical_section_title: Movable type / Type-founding
caption_attribution_description: English: Ligature of ſ and i in 12pt Garamond.
context_page_description: Movable type is the system and technology of printing and typography that uses movable components to reproduce the elements of a document usually on the medium of paper.
  The world's first movable type printing technology for printing paper books was made of porcelain materials and was invented around AD 1040 in China during the Northern Song Dynasty by the inventor Bi Sheng. The oldest extant book printed with movable metal type, Jikji, was printed in Korea in 1377 during the Goryeo dynasty.
  The diffusion of both movable-type systems was, to some degree, limited to primarily East Asia. The development of the printing press in Europe may have been influenced by various sporadic reports of movable type technology brought back to Europe by returning business people and missionaries to China. Some of these medieval European accounts are still preserved in the library archives of the Vatican and Oxford University among many others.
  Around 1450, Johannes Gutenberg introduced the metal movable-type printing press in Europe, along with innovations in casting the type based on a matrix and hand mould.
caption: A piece of cast metal type, Garamond style long s i ligature. See also: Sort.
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