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08347_Field_TCGG T112.txt
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1996-04-10
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who pioneered in the invention of paper, printing,
gunpowder, and the compass—to speak only of some of
their best known innovations—did not also take
precedence in devising the power loom, the steam engine,
and the other revolutionary machines of the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries.
The purpose of printing among the Chinese was not the
creation of uniform repeatable products for a market and a
price system. Print was an alternative to their prayer wheels
and was a visual means of multiplying incantatory spells, much
like advertising in our age.
But we can learn much about print from the Chinese
attitude towards it. For the most obvious character of print is
repetition, just as the obvious effect of repetition is hypnosis or