Bi Sheng carved characters in clay and fired them hard to make the type.
Tips
history
All we know of him is a short passage in the 《梦溪笔谈》 of 沈括: he carved each character on a piece of sticky clay, fired it hard, and set the pieces in an iron frame with resin and wax. This was around 1040, some four hundred years before Gutenberg.
mistakes
His name is written with 昇, an old form of 升 "to rise" that is still used in personal names: 毕昇, not 毕升.
