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Bi Sheng (972–1051) was a Chinese artisan and engineer during the Song dynasty (960–1279), who invented the world's first movable type. Bi's system used fired clay tiles, one for each Chinese character, and was invented between 1039 and 1048. Printing was one of the Four Great Inventions. Because Bi was a commoner, not an educated person, little is known about his life besides this invention.
Bi Sheng also developed Wood type, but it was abandoned in favor of ceramic types due to the presence of wood grains and the unevenness of the wooden type after being soaked in ink.
After his death, ceramic movable type may have spread to the Tangut kingdom of Western Xia, where a Buddhist text known as the Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra was found in modern Wuwei, Gansu, dating to the reign of Emperor Renzong of Western Xia (r. 1125-1193). The text features traits that have been identified as hallmarks of clay movable type such as the hollowness of the character strokes and deformed and broken strokes. The ceramic movable-type also passed onto Bi Sheng's descendants. The next mention of movable type occurred in 1193 when a Southern Song chief counselor, Zhou Bida (周必大), attributed the movable-type method of printing to Shen Kuo. However Shen Kuo did not invent the movable type but credited it to Bi Sheng in his Dream Pool Essays. The ceramic movable type was also mentioned by Kublai Khan's councilor Yao Shu, who convinced his pupil Yang Gu to print language primers using this method.
The government official Wang Zhen () improved Bi Sheng's clay types by innovation through the wood, as his process increased the speed of typesetting as well.
By 1490, bronze movable type was developed by the wealthy printer Hua Sui (1439–1513).
Wooden movable-type printing became widespread in the Qing dynasty (1644–1912), but did not replace woodblock printing, probably because of the expense of creating a font of so many pieces or the low cost of a copyist.
He also appears in a commemorative stamp by the Liberia post office due to his invention of movable printing.
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