The Tang Dynasty started from saving Empress Changsun

Chapter 90 Pinyin Alphabet
Movable type printing is actually more suitable for phonetic writing, and dozens of letters can be combined back and forth.The pictograph font library is too large, and each character is a block.

It is impossible to count the number of Chinese characters, but there are 22561 characters in "Jade Pian" written by Sun Qiangzeng in the Tang Dynasty.

One set of blocks is definitely not enough, at least three or five sets will do.However, the demand for commonly used characters is large, and more characters need to be cast.

For example, some characters are used so frequently that they can appear ten times or eight times on a page, and more characters need to be cast separately.

According to Chen Jingke's statistics, almost 20 characters are needed to make movable type printing work normally.

The Kangxi court made copper movable type, and it could be printed normally with more than 25 blocks.Considering that the total amount of Chinese characters in the two dynasties is different, and excluding some rare characters, 20 characters should be a more reliable number.

Chen Jingke is engaged in lead movable type. He asked the prices of the two metals. Lead is one-sixth of copper.Moreover, there is no way to spend lead directly as money, so there is no need to be afraid of someone stealing it.

Even so, 20 blocks are worth a lot, and no one can afford them except the imperial court and the rich and wayward.

Moreover, the production of blocks is more difficult than engraving, and the fewer books printed, the higher the cost. It is not as cost-effective to use engraving directly.

The copper movable type produced by the Kangxi court turned a good thing into a bad thing that wastes money and people because only one set of books was printed and shelved.

In the end, the copper movable type casted by hard work was melted down and cast into copper coins.

Just imagine, if the Kangxi Dynasty was not so short-sighted and used this set of copper movable type to print more books, would sharing the cost be another result?

Unfortunately, the world has no ifs.

Naturally, Chen Jingke would not make such a mistake. He has a longer-term plan and will print more books in the future to ensure that this set of movable type will not go to waste.

But the 20-character block created another problem. Metals were scarce in this era, so where could he find so many lead alloys.

But fortunately, you can ask for foreign aid.

I went directly to Li Shimin, explained the principle of movable type printing, and the materials came.

Li Shimin likes this kind of technological innovation very much, and for him it is a kind of cultural achievement.He even dispatched many craftsmen to Chen Jingke to speed up the production of blocks.

Material solving does not mean that all problems are solved, such as indexing.

The 20-word block index is also a big problem. It can't be piled up together.

So we must find a way to solve the problem of indexing.

This is not a problem for Chen Jingke, the pinyin arrangement.

Pinyin is not the idea of ​​modern people. The Zhiyin and Fanqie literacy methods have been invented in the Han Dynasty.The Sui Dynasty already had a relatively complete phonetic system, and the initial and final consonants were summed up in the middle and late Tang Dynasty.

It's just that these methods are not as convenient to use as the modern pinyin, so Chen Jingke directly copied the pinyin from his previous life.

Considering that the accent of the Tang Dynasty is different from the modern accent, Chen Jingke did not copy it mechanically, but learned it flexibly.

With the experience of predecessors and sages, this job is not particularly difficult, but it is more cumbersome and requires some assistants.

Instead of seeking help from other scholars, he found six literate and clever people from Zixiao Temple, and included the two sisters Yilian and Yihe in order to make up the number of people.

I specially found a room as a studio, and started editing directly.

Chen Jingke first said a few words of encouragement as usual: "Annotate all the words, I believe you can understand the meaning of this matter without me."

"I will not take credit for your contributions. When this work is completed, all of your names will be written in the editorial column at the beginning, and we will share this honor."

Everyone is very excited, this is also an alternative statement.The two sisters, Yihe and Yilian, were the most excited. This was something they never dared to think about before.

Seeing that everyone's enthusiasm was mobilized, Chen Jingke didn't say anything more, took out two thick sets of books and said:

"This is "Jade Pian" and "Qie Yun" written by the previous dynasty. What we have to do is to use the method I taught to annotate each word on the basis of these two books."

"Come to me if you have any difficult questions. Every hour we will make a summary and exchange experiences."

"Jade Pian" is a dictionary compiled during the Southern Dynasties, and it is also the first dictionary organized by radicals.In subsequent dynasties, scholars continued to add new words to it, making it the dictionary with the widest coverage.

"Qie Yun" is a book compiled in the Sui Dynasty. As the name suggests, it is a book that determines the pronunciation.It also proposed a complete phonetic system, and after the establishment of the Tang Dynasty, this book was identified as official rhyme.

Chen Jingke and the others don't need to make too many changes. On the basis of "Jade Pian" and "Qie Yun", they can use his "invented" pinyin alphabet to phoneticize each word.

At the beginning, the work was not going very smoothly, mainly because everyone was unfamiliar with pinyin and needed his constant guidance.Every time the exchange experience is checked, there will be a lot of mistakes.

But as the work progressed, everyone became more and more familiar with the pinyin letters, and there were fewer and fewer mistakes. In the end, Chen Jingke only needed to do the final review.

However, he was not idle, and the production of movable lead type at the printing shop also required him to do the final verification.The qualified ones will be kept, and the unqualified ones will be melted down and recast.

The most troublesome thing is the production of hydraulic machinery. Although he knows the general structure, the specific production is very difficult.

For example, bearings, as mentioned earlier, the quality of bearings made of unqualified steel is too poor and easy to be damaged, so the quality of steel needs to be improved.

But he really didn't know much about this thing, and the only relevant knowledge he knew was the Song Dynasty's method of frying steel that he had seen in history books.

It is to fry pig iron and wrought iron juice together to obtain steel in batches.

Compared with the Tang Dynasty, this kind of steelmaking technology is a cross-age progress, but it still cannot meet the needs of bearings.

There is no way to improve the quality of the steel, so he can only find a way on the bearings. In the end, the knowledge of his previous life provided him with inspiration.

Since steel balls are not enough, what about steel columns?Can increasing the contact area improve the bearing capacity?

Then I found a craftsman to study together, and came up with a cylindrical bearing, and the durability was improved qualitatively.

Later, gears, connecting rods and other equipment were developed... In fact, there have been 'modern' tools such as gears and vernier calipers in ancient times.

If you pay attention to archaeology, you will find many things that refresh your cognition.

In short, after nearly a month of research, a set of simple and technological hydraulic machinery has been officially completed.

Everyone exclaimed when they saw that the hydraulic saw sawed the waist-thick tree into planks in less than a cup of tea.

You must know that if this tree uses manpower, it will take two people almost a day to break it down into planks.

The efficiency of hydraulic saws has been increased countless times.

The same is true for the shredder at the back. Trees, weeds and the like are thrown in and spit out are full of debris.

The hydraulic stamping machine directly presses the thin iron plate into the desired shape.

Craftsmen don't understand its meaning, but Chen Jingke knows that punching machines are many times more useful than pulverizers, mixers, and hydraulic saws.

Li Shimin looked at the report in his hand and couldn't calm down for a long time.

Not because of the successful development of hydraulic machinery, but because of Chen Jingke's performance.

(End of this chapter)