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🌊 Ripple · counterfactual

What if Movable type in Song China had gone differently?

1040 · china

Bi Sheng sets text in reusable ceramic characters.

If it had gone differently: Printing stays a woodblock craft for the rare classic; no template for cheap mass text reaches anyone.

What it set up
  1. 900Gunpowder weapons in China, War stays a matter of walls, horses and bows; castles and cavalry keep their thousand-year dominance.
  2. 1440Gutenberg's printing press, Books stay hand-copied and rare; literacy spreads at a crawl for another century.

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