Discovery of the New World’s Oldest Extant Metal-Type–Printed Book in Korea through Image Acquisition, Comparison, and Analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Image acquisition, comparison, and analysis technology was applied to address questions regarding medieval Korean printing technology that have existed for fifty years. Two nearly identical books of The Song of Enlightenment (南明泉和尙頌證道歌), with Korean treasure status, were investigated based on material properties of metal, wood, and ink. It led the discovery of the new world’s oldest extant metal-type-printed book in the thirteenth century in Korea. One version was identified as metal-type-printed in early September of 1239, as stated in the inscription. It predates Jikji (直指), the oldest extant metal-type-printed book officially recognized by UNESCO, by 138 years and the Gutenberg 42-line Bible by 216 years. This was a stunning discovery of the history of innovations in printing technology in the thirteenth century from the East. The other version was identified as woodblock-printed in the Joseon dynasty of Korea between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Omni-directional shrinkage of printed pages was observed from the duplicated woodblock printed version. Ink tones and printing patterns of medieval Korean printing techniques were also significantly different and provide important clues for printing technique identification. The characteristics of the two books were compared with the Jikji and Bible to find similarities and differences between medieval prints from the East and the West. La technologie d'acquisition, de comparaison et d'analyse d'images a été appliquée pour répondre à des questions sur la technologie d'impression coréenne médiévale qui existent depuis cinquante ans. Deux livres presque identiques de *Le Chant de l'immédiat satori* (南明泉和尙頌證道歌), ayant le statut de trésor en Corée, ont été étudiés en fonction des propriétés matérielles du métal, du bois et de l'encre. Cela a conduit à la découverte du plus ancien livre imprimé en caractères métalliques existant dans le monde, datant du XIIIe siècle en Corée. Une version a été identifiée comme imprimée en caractères métalliques au début de septembre 1239, comme indiqué dans l'inscription. Elle précède le *Jikji* (直指), le plus ancien livre imprimé en caractères métalliques officiellement reconnu par l'UNESCO, de 138 ans, et la Bible de Gutenberg en 42 lignes de 216 ans. Cette découverte a bouleversé l'histoire des innovations en technologie d'impression au XIIIe siècle en provenance de l'Est. L'autre version a été identifiée comme imprimée en xylographie durant la dynastie Joseon en Corée, entre les XVe et XVIe siècles. Un retrait omnidirectionnel des pages imprimées a été observé dans la version imprimée en xylographie. Les tons d'encre et les motifs d'impression des techniques d'impression médiévales coréennes étaient également très différents et fournissent des indices importants pour l'identification des techniques d'impression. Les caractéristiques des deux livres ont été comparées avec le *Jikji* et la Bible pour trouver des similarités et des différences entre les impressions médiévales de l'Est et de l'Ouest.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".