Charity Anderson
“I ain't never worked in the fields. But, honey, I could sure enough wash, iron and knit and weave. Sometimes I weaved six or seven yards of cloth, and do my housework too. I learnt the children how to weave, and wash, and iron, and knit too…” – Charity Anderson
Yan Zhang ’26
What do the iron and the printing press have in common? They were both invented in Asia. Over 3,000 years ago the Chinese invented the first clothes iron, to press the pleats of their exquisite silk hanfu. The iron was shaped, as its Chinese name Yundou implies, like the big dipper constellation. It was a small bronze bowl with a handle, filled with hot coals (and sometimes incense). At the same time during the late Song Dynasty, a man named Bi Sheng (990 - 1051) invented a moveable type with individual characters baked out of clay. This printing technique was later refined by Korean monks preserving Buddhist manuscripts. The Mongols then spread this concept throughout their vast Empire along the Silk Road from Asia through Turkey. In the 13th century it was improved by the Uyghurs, a highly learned people who had an alphabet (rather than character) based written language. Between around 1000 to 1500 AD the Mongolian hordes invaded Persia and Europe (including Germany where Gutenburg lived), bringing their technology wherever they went.
Sources
- Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 1, Alabama, Aarons-Young. to 1937, 1936.
- How did the Ancients Chinese Iron Hanfu - Newhanfu
- So, Gutenberg Didn’t Actually Invent Printing As We Know It ‹ Literary Hub
- The Little Known History of Jikji, the World’s Oldest Printed Book via Metal Moveable Type
