Wang Zhen (inventor)

Wang Zhen (simplified Chinese: 王祯; traditional Chinese: 王禎; pinyin: Wáng Zhēn; Wade–Giles: Wang Chen, fl. 1290 – 1333) was an official of the Yuan Dynasty (1271 – 1368 AD) of China. He was one of the early innovators of the wooden movable type printing technology. His illustrated agricultural treatise was also one of the most advanced of its day, covering a wide range of equipment and technologies available in the late 13th and early 14th century.

Wang Zhen was born in Shandong province, and spent many years as an official of both Anhui and Jiangxi provinces. From the years 1290 to 1301, he was a magistrate for Jingde, Anhui province, where he was a pioneer of the use of wooden movable type printing. The wooden movable type was described in Wang Zhen's publication of 1313 AD, known as the Nong Shu (農書), or Book of Agriculture. Although the title describes the main focus of the work, it incorporated much more information on a wide variety of subjects that was not limited to the scope of agriculture. Wang Zhen's Nong Shu of 1313 was a very important medieval treatise outlining the application and use of the various Chinese sciences, technologies, and agricultural practices. From water powered bellows to movable type printing, it is considered a descriptive masterpiece on contemporary medieval Chinese technology.

Wang Zhen wrote the masterpiece of the Nong Shu for many practical reasons, but also as a means to aid and support destitute rural farmers in China looking for means to improve their economic livelihoods in the face of poverty and oppression during the Yuan period. Although the previous Song Dynasty was a period of high Chinese culture and relative economic and agricultural stability, the conquering Mongol rulers of the Yuan Dynasty thoroughly damaged the economic and agricultural base of China during the conquest of it. Hence, a book such as the Nong Shu could help rural farmers maximize efficiency of producing yields and they could learn how to use various agricultural tools to aid their daily lives. However, it was not intended to be read by rural farmers (who were largely illiterate), but local officials who desired to research the best agricultural methods currently available that the peasants otherwise would know little of.

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