During the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics on Friday evening a giant scroll was unveiled, measuring one and half football fields, with China’s history played out in the course of the event, partly through performers creating artworks on the centre of the scroll, and partly through underground video projectors sending images to both sides.

China ranks paper and printing as two of its four great inventions, along with the compass and gunpowder. It claims to have invented paper 3000 years ago, and invented movable type 600 years before Gutenberg. However China’s obsession with itself, constant warring and subsequent self-destruction meant printing never took off.

During the ceremony some four billion people around the world watched as a remarkably technical and beautiful performance, with precision co-ordination showed movable type coming into being and making waves around the country.

To celebrate movable-type printing, a grid of Chinese characters mounted on top of box-like structures took centre stage. The moveable type moved up and down in perfect synchronisation before spelling out the words for harmony and peace in Chinese. The characters then transformed into a computer keyboard in an artistic depiction of the Great Wall. At the end, the keyboard sprouted peach blossoms.

But the biggest surprise came at the end when it was revealed the keys were operated by 897 performers. Up until that point, the keyboard movements were so precise and well coordinated it was easy to assume it was controlled by a real computer. It took the keyboard performers 10 months to master their jobs.

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