Chapter 49: Grand Vision: The History of Printing and Choosing the Right Method

After the dream of movable type printing sparked in young Cyrus's mind, he fully delved into his modern memory. He needed to find a way to mass-produce knowledge, a way that would lessen the toil of manual copying and free books from the monopoly of a select few. He pondered the tumultuous history of printing worldwide; the path humanity had traversed to achieve this revolutionary tool, and now, he had to initiate it thousands of years earlier on the Iranian plateau.

The first step in the history of printing was block printing or woodblock printing, whose roots trace back to ancient China. In this method, an entire page of text or an image was carved in relief onto a block of wood. This wooden block was then inked and pressed onto paper. Its advantages included the relative simplicity of creating the block and the possibility of reproducing texts for a limited number of copies, especially for religious texts and calendars. However, its major drawback was that any change in the text required carving a new block, and the useful life of a block was limited, wearing out after printing a large number of copies.

Then, in the 11th century CE in China, Bi Sheng revolutionized this field by inventing movable type printing with clay characters. In this method, each letter or character was individually carved onto small pieces of clay. These clay characters, after firing, could be reused repeatedly to compose different pages. However, clay characters were very fragile, broke easily, and were difficult to ink.

After clay characters, wooden movable type printing reached its perfection in China and especially in Korea. In this method, letters were carved individually from wood. These wooden characters had greater durability than clay characters and could be used to print a larger number of books. Cyrus recalled that in Korea, this method was significantly used for reproducing Buddhist books and scientific texts. But still, wood fibers and their texture could reduce the precision of the characters, and wooden characters would warp and wear out over time.

Finally, he contemplated metal movable type printing, which had advanced in ancient Korea and reached its peak in 15th-century Europe with Johannes Gutenberg's use of a lead, tin, and antimony alloy. This method offered the ultimate in precision, durability, and speed for mass production. Metal characters did not break easily, printed very precise lines, and could be used millions of times. However, their manufacture required advanced metallurgy and knowledge of alloy composition, which seemed very difficult to achieve in Cyrus's ancient era.

Cyrus carefully weighed the advantages and disadvantages of each method for his circumstances in Anshan. He thought about the work done in Korea and their advancements in wooden and metal movable type printing, especially for precision and efficiency. Block printing might be suitable for mass-producing a single book like the Avesta, but it was inefficient for producing various and diverse books, or newspapers and government decrees. Clay movable type printing was not a stable choice due to its fragility. Metal movable type printing was ideal, but the metallurgical challenges of that era made him ponder.

Ultimately, considering the materials and technologies available at the time, Cyrus concluded that he should focus on wooden or clay movable type printing. Wood seemed the more practical option due to its abundance in the Zagros and relative ease of carving, although clay was also accessible for making molds and characters. He had to invent a method that could carve characters with sufficient precision and fix them in a mold in a way that would allow for continuous and uniform printing.

This decision was Cyrus's next step on the path of the printing revolution; a revolution that, through his efforts, was to begin thousands of years earlier than its time in the West, in the heart of the Iranian plateau. He thought of his paper workshop, where soon, not only paper but also speaking characters would be born from wood or clay to enlighten the world.