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Wang Zhen
Yuan agronomist from Dongping who wrote the illustrated Treatise on Agriculture as a county magistrate and printed with wooden movable type set from revolving tables
On an observatory terrace at night, a large bronze armillary sphere stands on a stone base while two people stand with their backs turned facing the view; stars are joined into constellation lines overhead, and a sundial and tiered dripping water vessels stand at the right.
Also known as Zi Boshan
- Roles
- Scientist
Wang Zhen, courtesy name Boshan, came from Dongping in present-day Shandong. He became magistrate of Jingde in Xuanzhou in 1295 and was moved to Yongfeng in Xinzhou in 1300, and in both counties he urged people to plant mulberry and trees and to use better tools. Drawing on the dry farming of the north and the rice paddies of the south, he wrote a Treatise on Agriculture (Nongshu) in three parts, on general husbandry, on crops, and on implements, the last illustrated with many drawings of tools and water-lifting machines; his preface is dated 1313. At Jingde he had craftsmen carve more than thirty thousand wooden type and used them to print a county gazetteer, setting the type from revolving tables arranged by rhyme so that the characters came round to the compositor. His account of the method, appended to the treatise, is the earliest surviving systematic description of wooden movable type.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; in office and writing 1295–1313