Late Tang Dynasty Floating Life

Chapter 1308 Civilization
On the fifth day of March in the sixth year of Jianji, the spring sowing has ended.

After the court was over, Shao Shude looked at the contents of the "group".

Lu Huaizhong, the commander of the Xingzhou camp, briefly reported the situation on the battlefield, and asked for a new batch of equipment, including arrows, wound medicine, rain cloth, etc.

Soldiers and horses from all walks of life have gathered under the city of Zhenzhou. After ten days of fierce attack, they began to dig trenches and besiege.

The appearance of the Wansheng Yellow-headed Army on the battlefield caused a burst of confusion among the soldiers in the town.A high-ranking official and general wanted to surrender, but was beheaded and killed by ordinary soldiers, and all his family wealth was taken away.

On Lu Huaizhong's official letter, all the envoys and ministers of the Privy Council had endorsed it. Shao Shude looked at it, wrote a big "ke", and forwarded it to the Zhengshitang to urge the Ministry of Households to allocate supplies.

After finishing his work, he called Zhou Zhizhong, the medical officer of the Imperial Medical Office.

Zhou Zhizhong is also an old man. He was the younger brother of Zhou Zhoulang, a medical official in the Lingzhou era. He has practiced medicine for nearly 20 years and has rich experience.

"Brother Ling is busy collecting statistics on common diseases in various states. How are you doing what I taught you?" Shao Shude asked.

Mrs. Chu gave birth to a daughter in October last year. She died of illness two days ago, and the imperial physician was helpless.Shao Shude said it was a bacterial or viral infection, but the imperial physician was at a loss.

From this point of view, Shao Shude felt that the importance of the Western Regions had risen several levels.

There must be a market for technology, and it must be promoted in depth. The Chinese people have learned this lesson of blood and tears from ancient times to the present.

The waterwheel of the Sui Dynasty was reinvented in the Ming Dynasty, which is so funny!
Taking optics as an example, the market actually exists.

However, for now, relying on the rich market alone seems to be able to guarantee that things like glasses will not disappear. After all, Europeans didn't have glasses at first.

This made him ponder, why is this technology not popularized, so that it is almost lost?Could it be invented again after hundreds of years?The conclusion is that there is no market created, and if there is no market, there will not be too many people using it. At best, it is just a plaything of strange skills and obscenities in the hands of the royal family and nobles. Of course, it is easy to lose.

The craftsman was hired with a lot of money, and went to the Shaofu Youshang Department as a supervisor from the ninth rank, and brought a dozen apprentices to start polishing the lens.

"Go back and take a look." Shao Shude waved his hand and said, "The Tang Dynasty is magnificent and colorful, with a prosperous culture, attracting all nations to come to court. The Great Xia is no worse than the Great Tang. But I don't want you to be too arrogant and conceited. In this world It is very big, even a small country with a foreign country has its merits. Seeking truth from facts, we just have to learn from them. I don’t know if I don’t read this manuscript. I was shocked when I saw it. The big cannibal has already studied it so deeply. Yes. They may be inferior to China in some aspects, but they are superior in some aspects. Don’t be arrogant, China is vast, and although it has a large land and resources, it is not far behind. That’s it.”

This book also mentions the working principle of lenses (including convex lenses and concave lenses), as well as the production of simple magnifying glasses.

"Yes. The minister will leave." Zhou Zhizhong held the book in his hand and stepped back slowly.

Slowly maintain the optical market first, and expand the number of practitioners as much as possible.With more people, technology can be maintained and even further developed—the number of employees is very important. In theory, the more people in this industry, the easier it is for technology to be passed on.

Shao Shude tapped on the table again, and said after a long time: "Decree to run the school under the Ministry of Internal Affairs."

Of course, behind the business, he cares more about maintaining cultural and technical ties with the West (Central Asia, West Asia, Europe).

The routines in the optical market are essentially no different from wool.

Cost, this is something that is easily overlooked.

If it were not for the devastating natural disasters brought by the Mongols, the civilizations of Central Asia and West Asia would seriously regress, and history would probably go in another direction.

Thinking of this, he couldn't sit still, and felt deeply that time was running out.

He has read this book, and the knowledge points are rather messy and have not yet been effectively linked together.But he has a feeling that after dozens or hundreds of years of research on Dashi, maybe the theory can be perfected and written into a book.

Old-eyed officials, nobles, and wealthy businessmen do not know how many people are there. For them, glasses are just needed-in history, in 1352, the Italians invented glasses, and they were introduced to China through Nanyang in the middle of the Ming Dynasty. Optical shops appeared in Suzhou, proving the need It is not small.

Building a car behind closed doors is a dead end, and it will gradually lag behind foreign countries.In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, facing the endless new knowledge and new technologies in the West, lack of communication and ignorance, the gap was gradually widened. By the end of the Ming Dynasty, the gap had become astonishingly large.

But what needs to be solved urgently is actually the cost problem.

According to the rules of seeking truth from facts, what you cannot prove is not science but a hypothesis.If you want to persuade others and let others accept your point of view, you cannot rely on your own power and influence, but rely on solid scientific basis.

The cost of a new technology is too high, it is still not suitable for promotion, there will be no market, and it will eventually disappear.

Things like lenses have a very early history.The earliest physical lens unearthed in the world should be a crystal lens that can magnify objects made by the Assyrian Empire, the successor of the ancient Babylonian civilization, on the eve of its demise (700 BC).

This book corrects some misconceptions in the ancient Greek era. For example, Haitham believed that people can see objects because the light on the objects is reflected into people's eyes, while the Greeks believed that people's eyes emit light and touch objects. to the object so it can be seen.

This idea has actually been around for a long time.Now that the imperial court has allocated funds to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, hurry up and do it.

Of course, Shao Shude also felt the same way, translating manuscripts, that's all.

Shao Shude felt that it was necessary to maintain the existence of these countries, communicate with the Central Plains, and communicate with each other.Everyone learns together, promotes each other, and makes progress with each other. Let them look east, go east, at least maintain a balance in exchanges with Europe and China, and not favor one side. Perhaps it is a great thing that can change the future of the entire nation. .

The cost of glasses made of crystal will not be low, and after all, they can only be spread to the wealthy class, unless there is glass—it must be cheap glass produced on a large scale, and expensive glass is no different from crystal.

After Shao Shude finished reading this book, he felt emotional.Haitham was able to write this book because he stood on the shoulders of giants.Before him, the corresponding knowledge had been done a lot of research by predecessors, and many theories were put forward, and he finally sorted out, perfected, corrected, and wrote a book.

Zhou Zhizhong took the manuscript and looked at it. There were only three words on the cover: "Book of Light", which was neither fish nor fowl.

In fact, he had talked about the views of bacteria and viruses with Zhou Zhoulang many years ago, but no one believed them.He couldn't shut himself in the room like Leeuwenhoek, spending years hand-polishing various high-magnification magnifying glasses, and then assembling a microscope.What's more, he doesn't even know how to polish a lens.

He couldn't explain it either.

Shao Shude promotes new things, trying not to use administrative orders, government investment, or compulsory implementation, but to use market orientation to naturally stimulate the production of industries with market demand.

But at this time, Shao Shude searched for a long time, and finally found a former Tang Shaofu craftsman who had avoided the war in Hu County, Jingzhao Prefecture. He could make lenses.

This is a view he has instilled all along, and he will not blatantly undermine it.

Manufacturing cost, service life, work reliability, promotion channels, after-sales maintenance, etc. are all very important, and they all determine the fate of new technologies and products, and determine whether they will gradually disappear in our society after they are invented. life, and to be reinvented hundreds of years later.

Their first task was to cooperate with the Imperial Medical Administration to polish the lens and then magnify the object, trying to find the bacteria that Shao Shude mentioned.

There are a large number of farming and commercial countries in Central Asia and West Asia. In fact, they are culturally prosperous, with many innovative things and their own unique skills. Losing Datang, those countries are actually not behind.

Fortunately, there are craftsmen.

Travelers can do limited things. When there are millions of civilized people in the West who have not been destroyed by the barbaric Mongolia to do research and study, and then communicate with the East, the benefits to the progress of social civilization may be better than a hundred traversers. Still big.

Shao Shude nodded, picked up a bound book from the case, called the palace man to pass it to Zhou Zhizhong, and said: "This is the manuscript of Dashi compiled by the Imperial College, you can take a look, and then listen to it with the craftsman, maybe you can get something. In addition, you may need to superimpose two lenses... Forget it, I will let the Ministry of Internal Affairs do it."

"Your Majesty, there is no progress yet. Master Mani said that this kind of thing is also available in Dashi, and it is called "reading stone". Do some." Zhou Zhizhong replied.

This knowledge did not spread to the East, but communicated with the West, so that after Europeans absorbed and digested it, they made the world's first microscope 500 years later—made by an optician, and China was the Ming Dynasty at that time In the mid-term, there was not enough communication with the outside world, and gradually began to lag behind.

Some people subconsciously think that as long as something is made, it will be promoted.

A technology without a broad market is doomed to have no vitality.

An exquisitely made crystal stone lens with gold ornaments was unearthed from the tomb of Liu Jing, the king of Guangling in the Eastern Han Dynasty. It should be a magnifying object played by nobles.

In 1015 in history, Arab scholar Ibn Haytham published the epoch-making optical book "Book of Light" after systematically studying the local knowledge of ancient Greek optics.

This school is not just an educational institution, but more precisely, an industry-university-research institution.

"Chu Shenping!" Shao Shude shouted.

"The minister is here." Chu Shen leveled his helmet and threw off his armor, and entered from the hall.

"Call Yinan Zhierlang, and follow me south to Zhenzhou for inspection." Shao Shude ordered.

"Obey!" Chu Shenping immediately responded without any nonsense.

(End of this chapter)