Long before mechanical printing, the development of stable inks — mixtures of charcoal, gum, and water perfected over millennia in China and other Asian traditions — created the material condition for fixing signs on lightweight supports and reproducing them. Ink is not an invention with a single date or author: it is a cumulative technology whose maturation made possible Cai Lun's paper, Bi Sheng's type, and, centuries later, Gutenberg's press. In the genealogy of written information, it occupies the place fire occupies in cooking: prior to everything else.