In early April, Xiao Ruxun received a gift from the newly established Ministry of Education.

The Ministry of Education Shangshu was named by Kong Shangxian, the head of the Qufu Kong clan, but he only received this position in Qufu Yao.

In fact, it is a few of Xiao Ruxun's cronies and officials who are in charge of this department, and there is really nothing big to do in this department at the moment, and there are no scholars to enter, because they are responsible for the innovation of printing.

Although movable type printing was invented in the Northern Song Dynasty, this technology did not play as much of a role as imagined in the hundreds of years from the Song Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty.

More often used as a supplement to engraving printing, and the dozens of letters in English are different, there are too many Chinese characters, too many fonts, and the cost of printing with movable type is really high.

There are also some very practical reasons, that is, since the Song Dynasty, China has needed a large number of books such as the Four Books and the Five Classics, and the engravings are well preserved, and there are very few new books.

Engraving printing work does not need to be literate, but movable type printing employees need literate people to do typesetting and find mistakes in it, and the cost goes up all of a sudden.

Its advantage is that it can increase efficiency and reduce costs when printing a large number of books, but if it is only dozens of hundreds of books, the cost is actually much higher.

There are too many Chinese characters, too many fonts, the scope of application is not large, the actual demand is small, the clay movable type and wooden movable type are easy to be damaged, and the copper movable type cannot be used in large quantities because of the lack of copper in China.

The Manchu Qing Dynasty once minted a set of tens of thousands of copper movable type, but later dissolved it to make copper coins due to financial difficulties.

For various reasons, the role of movable type printing in ancient times was not as great as modern people thought, but it had a huge impact in the West, and the impact of Gutenberg's invention of lead movable type printing was far greater than that of Bi Sheng's invention of cement movable type printing.

Xiao Ruxun learned that there were actually printing merchants in Changzhou who used raw materials such as copper and lead to make movable type, so he sent people to Changzhou to find people, and brought them back to Beijing after finding them, so that they could improve the lead type technology with the support of the Daqin government.

Let them hand over all the copper movable type belts in their hands to the government, Xiao Ruxun found that this is copper movable type, not a copper mold that can be used repeatedly, and he can't afford this kind of high cost, so he ordered a new copper mold to be made.

Officials with good calligraphy were sent to write out standard italics to make word marks, and copper molds were made as standards, and veteran craftsmen who had experience in making molds in military factories were sent to guide them to make copper molds that could be used repeatedly.

At this time, the officials of the Ministry of Education knew that what the emperor wanted to do was not a simple movable type, but a copper mold that could be used repeatedly, and once the copper mold was made, it could be unified to standard, and many complete sets of lead movable type could be produced and then distributed to the local use.

Based on the financial support of the Daqin government, the large-scale production of copper molds will not be carried out without worrying about financial difficulties.

After making a copper mold, you can reuse it many times to make a large number of lead movable type, Xiao Ruxun needs more than just four books and five classics, and the existing engraving cannot meet his needs, so he needs a large number of movable type to prepare for the printing of various books in the future.

At the same time, Xiao Ruxun also ordered craftsmen to improve the ink used in printing, and to study ink as the goal.

Xiao Ruxun told them that in the continent of Europa, more than 100 years ago, Xiyi had produced lead movable type and even lead movable type printing presses that could be used on a large scale.

They used lead alloy as raw material, and used lamp black and linseed oil as printing ink, and the quality of the books they produced was very good.

This had a great impact on the subordinate officials, and they could hardly believe that there was a country outside the Celestial Empire that had mastered such advanced cultural means.

Although there is no relevant technology, it is really not to underestimate the wisdom of human beings.

In order to get the emperor's commendation and appreciation, as well as to maintain the dignity of the Heavenly Empire, they worked hard day and night, and finally delivered the first thread-bound "Three Character Classic" printed with lead movable type to Xiao Ruxun in early April.

After Xiao Ruxun read it, he found that the book was indeed of good quality and exquisite, so he happily went to the Ministry of Education to watch the on-site operation of the officials.

Although there are only a few hundred made copper molds and lead type, there is also what looks like a printing press.

Xiao Ruxun went up and tinkered with it, it felt similar to a suitcase, fixing the paper on one side, applying ink to the lead movable type on the other side, closing and opening it on both sides, it was a very good piece of paper with words.

In terms of ink, Xiao Ruxun also looked at it, it was no longer a simple ink, but it had the feeling of ink, with a slight viscosity, as for what was in it, Xiao Ruxun didn't ask, just let them continue to do this, and if they needed anything, just send the requirements directly to the household.

In addition to these things, Xiao Ruxun also found a group of Confucian students who had experience in educating Mengtong in Beizhili and the three southeastern provinces, and asked them how they educated children to read and write.

This method is much better than the earlier method of straight pronunciation, but since the upper character of the reverse cut represents the initials, it should only represent the consonant, but in fact each Chinese character represents a complete syllable.

Since the lower character of the reverse cut represents the finals, it should only represent the vowel sound, but in the same way, there are very few Chinese characters that start with a vowel, so it is often necessary to borrow the Chinese character with consonants as the lower character for the reverse cut.

Of course, the more important thing is that it is slow to learn, it is difficult to spread it on a large scale, and the difference in local accents is also very large, and the communication between them is a bit problematic.

Although all dynasties have official dialects, Xiao Ruxun hopes to promote the official dialect to all parts of the country, and people all over the country will speak a kind of official dialect, which can be used to communicate without bringing the problem of accent communication.

After realizing the limitations of the tangent pronunciation of two characters, Xiao Ruxun remembered Hanyu Pinyin, the Western alphabet that is very suitable for phonetics, and Matteo Ricci, who is still in Myanmar today, for the sake of large-scale universal education.

This guy can learn Chinese as an Italian, and Xiao Ruxun is eager to know how to learn him.

And Xiao Ruxun vaguely remembered that Matteo Ricci once worked with someone to make the first romanization project of Chinese characters in history, which seemed to be specially designed to help missionaries learn Chinese.

Xiao Ruxun summoned Matteo Ricci from Myanmar to Beijing and asked him how he learned to use Romaji to phonetize Chinese characters.

Xiao Ruxun roughly observed Matteo Ricci's method and found that he did use the same method as the modern 26 English letters to phonetize Chinese characters, but there was no double letter such as zh and ch, and Matteo Ricci introduced that this method could be used to phonetize Chinese characters very well.

However, there is a slight difference with modern pinyin, and the difference is not big, and it is estimated that it is a problem of accent.

After some thought, Xiao Ruxun gathered the officials of the Ministry of Education together and proposed this phonetic literacy method to them.

Please remember that the first domain name of this book is:. Nine Heavenly God Emperor mobile version reading website: