Great Song Super Scholar

Chapter 626 Copper and lead movable type
"A-Ning, are you still struggling with immigration?" Zhu Jie asked with a slight smile in the carriage.

Fan Ning nodded and asked, "Auntie, what news do you have about this matter?"

"I just heard that this was specially approved by the emperor, but whether it is true or not, I don't know."

"Specially approved by the emperor?"

Fan Ning thought for a while, and there is really a possibility. It is a dream to expect Zhizhengtang to take the initiative to approve immigrants to the private island. Besides, there is also the Empress Dowager Cao, but the Empress Dowager Cao will avoid suspicion. .

So why didn't the emperor tell himself this morning?Or maybe he didn't think about it because he didn't see the relevant incident.

But in any case, it was a good thing that made him overjoyed.

"A-Ning, there is something I want to discuss with you." Zhu Jie hesitated in the back seat.

Fan Ning turned around and said with a smile, "Auntie, just open your mouth."

"A few days ago, Qi'er told me that he wanted to go to Beidao."

Fan Ning frowned quickly, Zhu Qi was his sister-in-law, he was going to Beidao, wouldn't his sister also go with him?Why didn't my wife tell me about this?

"Where's Ah Jing? Go with me too?"

"Of course, they are husband and wife, and they must go together."

Fan Ning didn't express his position clearly, so he could only ask with a faint smile: "You are doing well in Taixue, why do you want to go to Beidao?"

"He said that being in Taixue is boring, every day is monotonous, and there are intrigues. He can't calculate others. The last time Mingren talked with him, he kind of wants to go to Beidao to run a school."

It's Ming Ren again, this lingering guy, but Fan Ning can't say anything, the third uncle's family has gone, and the fourth uncle's wife and children have also gone, why can't my sister go?
"I will find an opportunity to talk to them about this matter. If I really want to go, I have no objection."

Speaking of this, Fan Ning suddenly had a sliver of understanding, perhaps this was Zhu Yuanfeng's idea!It happened to go to six thousand households, and at least three county towns were to be built. Isn't it appropriate for Zhu Qi to be the county magistrate in the past?

The carriage stopped slowly at the entrance of the newspaper office, and Zhu Jie led Fan Ning into the newspaper office. Deacons saluted Zhu Jie along the way.

Zhu Jie introduced to Fan Ning as he walked, "The newspaper office is divided into two parts, the front and the back. The front newspaper office is in charge of a big deacon, and there are more than a dozen deacons below, and then there are more than 60 detectives and more than a dozen miscellaneous clerks." , behind is the workshop, which is mainly responsible for engraving and printing, and two stewards are responsible for daily newspaper distribution and raw material purchase.

The newspaper office is similar to the newspaper offices of later generations, mainly because of the same functions, and someone must do it. For example, the detective is equivalent to the reporter, the deacon is equivalent to the editor, and the chief deacon is the editor-in-chief.

But what Fan Ning is interested in today is printing, and he actually uses a steam engine to print, which is very advanced!

Seeing Fan Ning's expectant face, Zhu Jie smiled lightly and said, "You might be disappointed!"

"Why?" Fanning asked puzzled.

"Because steam engine printing is just a gimmick. In actual operation, it is similar to manual printing, and the cost is still high. It is far less cost-effective to use it than manual printing. We just put it on the street for a few days to create some sensational effects, and then resumed manual printing. Otherwise, the monthly wages of a craftsman hired to maintain the steam engine would equal several printers."

"Is the steam engine still there?" Fanning asked with some disappointment.

"It's still there today, but it's going to move out tomorrow. Mingren and the others are going to transport it to Beidao, where they need it for grinding noodles."

Walking into a warehouse, Zhu Jie pointed to a machine that was the size of a car and covered with a tarpaulin and said, "This is a steam engine, a relatively small one, made by a craftsman, and it is more suitable for installation in three thousand Stone's boat."

Fanning lifted the tarpaulin and looked. It was indeed much smaller than the original steam engine. The original steam engine was as huge as a truck. This one is a car.

Fan Ning nodded secretly. If he could reduce the size of the steam engine, it meant that the master craftsman understood it thoroughly.

"what is that?"

Fan Ning suddenly found a pile of wooden boards piled up like a hill in the warehouse.

"It's an engraving block. We have to discard 12 yuan engraving block every day. The biggest cost is the engraving block. Each newspaper has three sides, and four engraving blocks are printed at the same time. It will be discarded on the same day and a new one will be engraved." Zhu Jie said helplessly.

"Then why not use movable type?"

Bi Sheng invented movable type printing during the Qingli period. At this time, he has seen it in many places. Since most of the books in the Song Dynasty are classics, such as the Four Books and Five Classics, such as Buddhist scriptures, such as poetry collections, etc., they can be printed repeatedly once engraved. A rigid set takes decades or even hundreds of years, while a small amount of official documents are written by hand.

In addition, the engraving repair technique is very mature, and there will be no case where a single character is engraved wrong, and the entire engraving block will be destroyed. Moreover, movable typesetting is very cumbersome. "The Analects of Confucius" was finally typesetting, and if someone ordered the "Diamond Sutra" tomorrow, they would have to tear it down and re-typeset it, but what if someone wanted to print "The Analects of Confucius" the day after tomorrow?
A good set of engraving blocks is the permanent asset of a printing shop and can be passed down from generation to generation. Therefore, movable type printing has little significance in history, and its promotion is very slow, and not many people are willing to use their brains to improve it.

However, movable type printing is very suitable for Europe. European characters only have dozens of letters, and typesetting is very easy. Therefore, movable type printing has been vigorously promoted in Europe and promoted European history. Europeans regard it as China's four great inventions, but In China, movable type printing is only recorded in Mengxi Bi Tan. China still used engraving technology until the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

However, the development of newspapers is exactly what needs movable type printing the most. The content is different every day, and it is rigid and discarded every day, which is time-consuming, laborious, and extremely wasteful.

Zhu Jie smiled wryly, "Why didn't we think of printing with movable type, but you can see for yourself."

Zhu Jie checked out more than a dozen newspapers from a box next to it, found two of them and handed them to Fan Ning, "Look for yourself, one is printed with movable type, and the other is printed with engraving, you will understand after reading it."

Fan Ning took two newspapers and looked at them carefully. They both had the same content, but one was illegible and the arrangement was uneven, and the other was clear and neat. Especially when it came to patterns, the blurred one was even more unbearable. There are large areas of ink stains, and it is impossible to tell what kind of painting it is.

Fan Ning pondered for a moment, and suddenly understood that what is being used now is pottery type, that is, clay type, and when fired into ceramics, no matter how exquisite the clay is, it will expand and deform during the firing process, and will be arranged together. It will not be so tight, it will be easy to loosen, and the characters will be deformed, and the printing will be blurred, and the wooden movable type is too soft, and the printed characters will be easily blurred.

Later, metal movable type was used to solve the problem of unclear handwriting and blurred and uneven layout, but it was too expensive to manufacture a set of metal movable type, costing thousands of pieces, and small printing shops could not afford it, and large printing shops did not care about the cost of engraving.

Fan Ning pondered for a while and said: "You can use copper or lead to cast movable type, and then inlay it on a fixed small chapter. The colors of this small chapter are classified by rhyme, one color and one rhyme. After printing, according to the color and rhyme Come and restore.

When reusing, first find the rhyme, and then find the font. As long as the operation is proficient, it will be at least twice as fast as the engraver, and there will be no waste of a lot of engraving blocks. If you make fifty sets of movable type, you will have fifty boards every day. Even if newspaper sales increase, don’t you have to worry about printing too much?Put a few sets of movable type in other places, as long as the content is sent there, it can be typeset and printed locally. My opinion, Auntie, can be considered. "

Several printing craftsmen around felt enlightened, and they said one after another: "Proprietor, it might be really feasible to use copper movable type or lead movable type, you can try it."

The Zhu Family Newspaper loses tens of thousands of dollars every year. If it weren't for the fact that it can guide public opinion, Zhu Yuanfeng really doesn't want to continue running it.

She nodded slowly, "Okay! Make a set of copper movable type and lead movable type. I will find someone to do it tomorrow."

(End of this chapter)