alt Hacker NewsAnd you can't read long texts if there aren't that many to begin with. But it raises a question - why didn't China, which invented printing press earlier, didn't fare better?
Replies
nephihaha • today at 9:29 AM
Because the Chinese writing system is immensely complicated, and alphabets are far easier to typeset.
You have to know over two thousand characters to read classical Chinese, with some appearing very rarely.
inglor_cz • today at 9:13 AM
Yeah, in Ancient Rome, the typical unit of writing was a scroll, not a book. Books (codices) only came to be widespread by 300 AD, and "widespread" still means "quite rare and expensive, but not totally unheard of".
> why didn't China, which invented printing press earlier, didn't fare better?
Moveable type was invented in the 11th century [1]. Kublai Khan moved in in the 13th. Then the Mings spent a couple centuries being autocratic menaces, Qianlong went on a pogrom of China's scholars and Europe caught up.
By the 13th century, China–uniquely–had both moveable-type presses and joint-stock companies. A combination of bad luck (the Mongols) and a tendency towards political shitshows squandered that lead.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_printing_in_East_As...