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While organizing the movable type materials, especially the matrix or lead types, we needed a whole set of lead types with every kind of font size to make comparisons; therefore we purchased a batch of lead types from the foundry still in business.

About three type racks are needed to store the types of regular-script Chinese characters that come in the size of preliminary, No. 1 to No. 6. Chinese types follow three number systems, whose numbers are the sequential multiples of a certain basic number. The American system is designated by "Point" (see Table 2-1). According to experts, the textbooks of thirty years ago in Taiwan adopted the types of 12P, which was called "New No. 4" since its size was between No. 4 and No. 5; the character size of annotations in magazines and other Chinese books was 9P, which was called "New No. 5" since its size was between No. 5 and No. 6. The co-existence of systems from China, the U.S. and Japan was evidence of a multicultural influence on Taiwanese movable type printing.

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Movable type printing