Quoting from the article:

" Choe came up with an alternative. Building on earlier Chinese attempts to 
create movable type, he adapted a method that had been used for minting bronze 
coins to cast 3-dimensional characters in metal. Then he arranged these pieces 
in a frame, coated them with ink, and used them to press sheets of paper. When 
he was done, he could reorganize the metal characters, eliminating the need to 
persistently chisel blocks. It was faster—to a certain extent. He completed the 
project in 1250 AD."

Not to pick nits here, but aren't we overlooking something.  AFAIK, what 
Gutenberg implemented ("invented" is perhaps too strong a term, especially 
given our lack of information about Gutenberg personally), was an entire system 
for producing books and other printed material.  This involved more than 
moveable type--it required the ability to cast whole fonts of type rapidly in 
lead, lock them quickly in a form, and integrate production on a common press 
(itself a far more significant invention than moveable type alone) so that the 
printed artifacts could be distributed on a relatively massive scale.  This is 
the thing that swept "the world" like wildfire in the European early modern 
period.

Nothing in this article actually suggests that Choe had even an inkling of the 
system Gutenberg deployed.  No doubt he had different aims. Putting type in a 
frame and pressing it by hand on sheets of paper is less than half of the 
technological and industrial process that led to what we fondly call the 
"modern" book.


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