The Chinese and Japanese used wooden blocks carved with characters for printing. These were known as woodblocks. The blocks were made
of pear or jujube wood. The text of a page was first written out by hand in ink. It was then laid face down on the block, and the block was cut with a mallet and chisel so that the letters stood out in relief and in reverse.The printer next spread ink over the block, and pressed the block onto paper, so that the text appeared the right way around. You will agree that this process of printing was quite time consuming indeed!
