ARTICLES

Printing: The Contested Invention

This article will be published shortly: Chinese scholars have long ranked printing as one of China's 'four major inventions', and so claims more than a decade ago by Korean scholars to have discovered the oldest book printed using moveable type were bitterly refuted in China. A stand-off now exists between the conflicting claims of Gutenberg and his two East Asian rivals, highlighting the fact that most inventions are cultural products that do not derive from a lone inventor.