this post was submitted on 09 May 2026
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History Memes

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submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by Grumpus_Maximus@thelemmy.club to c/historymemes@piefed.social
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[–] sukhmel@programming.dev 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, they invented typesetting in China long before Europe, but they had to prepare characters for each run because of amount of possible characters, the letters were pottery, and it didn't seem like very useful thing so it was abandoned after the inventor's death.

At least that's what I heard, it might be a retcon for PR purposes

[–] PugJesus@piefed.social 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Not a retcon at all! Though use of moveable type in China did continue past its inventor's death, it didn't acquire the same prominence or revolutionize printing the way that it did when invented in Europe.

[–] sukhmel@programming.dev 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Well, TIL, still I think it really highlights that some ideas need specific circumstances to create an impact

[–] BuccaneerScientist@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

This reminds me of Connections with James Burke (i only saw the reboot), that explores how breakthroughs have depended on other semi-related ideas and technology.

[–] Klear@quokk.au 2 points 2 months ago

This reminds me how setting prints letter-by-letter was time consuming, so the printers had common words or even whole phrases ready too. It was called stereotype.

In France they called it cliché...