What is movable type?

What is movable type?

Before the mid-1450’s printing was accomplished by carving all the letters into one wooden block. Because of the difficulty in preparing the blocks, the only kind of printing done then was for titled and decoration. The rest of the book was usually handwritten.
With the revolutionary invention of movable type, each letter was an individual block of type, which could be inserted into a frame along with the other letters. It was not a new idea in the 1400’s. Marco Polo, in 1298, told about the Chinese method of printing with individual blocks of type – Chinese method of printing with individual blocks of type – Chinese researchers date this practice as far back as the eleventh century. During 1045, a Chinese craftsman named Bi Sheng made individual letters of baked earthenware and set them in a block of wax, which he inked and pressed onto paper. By 1300, the Chinese were using wood blocks. The Koreans outdid them by making letters with metal