Printing pioneer passes away at 69

Wang Xuan, a pioneer of modern Chinese language printing, died after an illness at 11 am yesterday in Beijing. He was 69.

A Xinhua News Agency report did not mention the illness Wang suffered.

Honoured as a modern Bi Sheng, an ancient Chinese who invented the world's first set of movable-type printing more than 1,000 years ago, Wang was the father of the modern laser type-setting system for Chinese characters.

As an academician with both the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Wang was proficient in computer applications for processing words and photos. He was also a former chairman of the board of the Founder Group, a listed software leader.

In 2001, Wang received the State Scientific and Technological Award, the nation's highest honour in the field of science.

"We had known each other for 20 years," Ni Guangnan, an academician with the Chinese Academy of Engineering, was quoted by Sina.com as saying. "He struck me as a person full of innovations. He was both a prominent scientist and a dedicated entrepreneur. His typesetting system is a paradigm of self-innovation."

When Chinese printing companies were still using hand setting, Wang led the development of a large-scale integrated circuit on a microchip in 1975 to efficiently store compressed information in Chinese characters.

With anticipation of the future application of laser technology, Wang also invented the advanced laser typesetting system and produced a laser typesetting machine for Chinese characters.

"His invention has ushered Chinese printing into a new era, of computer and laser, out of the age of fire and lead," Fang Yi, former vice-premier, commented in 1980, the year a 26-page story rolled out of Wang's prototype laser typesetting system.

Having envisioned a big market for his invention, Wang dedicated himself to merchandising his laser typesetting systems with the Founder Group in the late 1980s. By 1993, almost all the domestic newspapers and printing houses had adopted Wang's system.

Zhang Suhua, a printing division employee for People's Daily, said Wang's invention was significant because it had "helped liberate Chinese printing workers from strenuous physical work."

Zhang said she used to run between workshops to assemble and reassemble varied sizes and typefaces of metal Chinese characters before the new system was applied.

"It always took more than 30 people eight hours a day to arrange only one page of news stories," she said.

People's Daily, China's largest newspaper, started using Wang's system in 1990. "From that year, the staff in our workshop was reduced by more than half," Zhang added.

Source: China Daily