Today, practically all movable type printing ultimately derives from Gutenberg's movable type printing, which is often regarded as the most important invention of the second millennium. The high quality and relatively low price of the Gutenberg Bible (1455) established the superiority of movable type, and printing presses rapidly spread across Europe, leading up to the Renaissance, and later all around the world.

The metal type pieces were more durable and the lettering was more uniform, leading to typography and fonts. Ĭompared to woodblock printing, movable type pagesetting was quicker and more durable for alphabetic scripts. Gutenberg was the first to create his type pieces from an alloy of lead, tin and antimony-the same components still used today. Neither movable type system was widely used, probably because of the enormous amount of labour involved in manipulating the thousands of ceramic tablets, or in the case of Korea, metal tablets.Around 1450, Johannes Gutenberg introduced what is generally regarded as an independent invention of movable type in Europe (see printing press), along with innovations in casting the type based on a matrix and hand mould. This led to the printing of the Jikji in 1377-today the world's oldest extant movable metal print book. Metal movable type was most likely first invented in Korea during the Goryeo Dynasty (around 1230). The first known movable type system was invented in China by Bi Sheng (毕昇) out of wood in 1040. Movable type is the system of printing and typography that uses movable components to reproduce the elements of a document (usually individual letters or punctuation).

Movable type definition